Free Republic

Up to 95 per cent of plastic polluting the world’s oceans pours in from just ten rivers, according to new research. The top 10 rivers – eight of which are in Asia – accounted for so much plastic because of the mismanagement of waste. About five trillion pounds is floating in the sea, and targeting the major sources – such as the Yangtze and the Ganges – could almost halve it, scientists claim. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt flew in coach-class seats on at least two trips home to Oklahoma when taxpayers weren’t footing the bill, despite claims he...

China will ramp up construction of dams, reservoirs and wells in response to a severe drought in the country’s south-west, but the move is likely to raise tensions with downstream countries, which have already blamed reduced river flows on Beijing. Most of south-west China has been affected by the drought, which began in November and has left more than 24m people without adequate access to drinking water. Downstream in Thailand, cargo boats have been stranded along the banks of the Mekong, which is at its lowest level in half a century, while fishermen complain of empty nets. Beijing has launched...

BANGKOK, Thailand - Six proposed dams on the Mekong River could displace up to 75,000 villagers and harm hundreds of species like the endangered giant catfish and Irrawaddy dolphin, conservationists warned Tuesday. Premrudee Daoroung, director of the Bangkok-based environmental group TERRA, said 13-year-old plans to build four dams in Laos and one each in Thailand and Cambodia have been revived as part of efforts — mostly by China, Thailand and Vietnam — to find new energy sources for their growing economies. "The natural flow of the river will all be completely changed," Premrudee said. "Of course, it will affect all...

Charting the Mekong's Changes The nets yield almost no fish today, the same as yesterday and the day before that. For generations, Bun Neang's family has depended on the bounty of Cambodia's Tonle Sap, a vast lake fed by one of the world's greatest rivers, the Mekong. Two decades ago, his father could rely on a daily catch totaling about 65 lbs. (30 kg). When the water gods were feeling particularly charitable, he would land a Mekong catfish, a massive bottom-feeder that can weigh as much as a tiger. But today, when Bun Neang dips his net into the caramel-hued...

An opportunity may be presenting itself for me to make a research stop-by in Vietnam (I've been there a number of times before), sometime in September or early October. This will give me an opportunity to engage in some brief opposition research on John Kerry and his role in the Vietnam War as well as his role in helping his friend Madame Nguyen Thi Bihn and her P.R.G. and his other friend Xuan Thuy and the North Vietnamese, to secure a military victory there in 1975.I've already in earlier years been to the anti-US history museum in Saigon, but...

The explanation for Senator John Kerry that he was in “Cambodia on Christmas 1968” is by now a famous if not humorous footnote to his overall portrayal of hi own Vietnam War experiences. It is seared in his own, and now our own, memories. However the statement by John Kerry of his whereabouts at that time begs a very important question. Did Kerry in fact violate a secret oath, made official by his signature, under penalty of severe punishment?William Shawcross, in his 1979 book Sideshow, detailing covert U.S. operations in Cambodia during the period of the Royal Cambodian government...

Here we go again Posted: December 10, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc. A close read of President Bush's November addresses at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington and at the Whitehall Palace in London leads a traditionalist almost to despair. George Bush did not write this democratist drivel. This is the kind of messianic rhetoric he probably never heard before he became president. Who is putting these words in his mouth? For if George Bush truly intends to lead a "global democratic revolution," and convert not only Iraq but the whole Middle East to democracy,...