Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill ; Mission accomplished or The Tar Baby?

The disastrous BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been capped and the great hope is that the extensive pollution can be contained with a minimum of environmental damage.
Some of the world’s most pristine natural wetlands such as the3 Florida everglades have been under threat.
Despite calls from Big Oil for a resumption of deep sea oil drilling the American federal government under the measured leadership of US President Obama has held firm and preventing more such drilling and another possible spill in the near term. On the surface at least the slick is fast disappearing and there is a greater sense of hope for the future.
No one really knows what the long term effects will be of this massive outflow of toxic material including dispersants, as well as ongoing oxygen depletion but history tells us that the Exxon Valdez oil spill 20 years ago in Alaska has left traces of pollution to this day. An improvement in clean up technology and oil disaster mitigation is one area that needs attention. A moratorium on future deep sea drilling should be linked to legislated new guidelines in the technology and its proper management.

Brave Dissenters East and West need your support

This is the anniversary of the death of Iranian martyr Neda Soltan. she gave her life in the cause for freedom and democracy. As a young woman she had no wish to be physically and psychologically imprisoned by a Burka under a brutal regime that enforces primitive Sharia Law.
There are those who say this is a cultural matter as if there were anything cultural or cultivated about this kind of unthinking slavery. Last night I saw footage on the news of a 13 year old girl being beaten by a whip wielding Mullah with murder on his mind. There should be a global collective outcry about this kind of dangerous abuse but the moral relativists are surely at work as we speak.
Even the cultural icon Germaine Greer has an apple in this basket and has explained it all away with some nonsense about a "woman's choice when it comes to what she wears" as though this were about fashion statements in a Reality TV (something our Germain is experienced in as all the world knows) . It is not. Even a person I much admire and have high hopes for, Us President Barak Obama, has fallen into the trap by saying the wearing of the hijab by Muslim women, is a "right", while criticising governments like France, Belgium and Switzerland who have sought to ban it.
This is the kind of political double-speaking that often passes for rational discourse in the West. I have a novel "London's Falling" (coming out in August in the UK with Caffeine Nights Publications" ) which details the use of the Burk or hijab to commit crime in addition to the arbitrary and illegal imposition of Sharia Law in some Western Islamic communities in a fictional context not unlike the present reality in cities like London, New York and Melbourne to list but a few. What it must be like to have close relatives impose this Iron Curtain of personal apparel on a daughter, wife, mother or significant other is probably beyond words. To engage in hand waving and armchair lecturing on this important issue so as it explain it away as some kind of endangered species of cultural artifact is morally weak and even life -threatening to those on the front lines of the battle in the Middle East and the vast Islamic diaspora circling the globe. It is not unknown for so-called "Honour Killings (an oxymoron if ever there was one)to occur within families (often but not always with the collusion of the mother at the behest of dominant males like the father, brother or husband)for such indiscretions. In these situations justice is a joke or a vaguely misunderstood part of Western Democracy seen as irrelevant to what amounts to the worst kind of tribal law. If you wouldn't want your own daughter , wife or self if female , to wear these this Antediluvian garb then don't make excuses for those who would suit up all available females with a smothering tent come the Universal Caliphate. People everywhere need to stand up for human rights and freedom of expression for those living under such brutality or these rights, constrained as they already are, could disappear as quickly as an ice block in the Saudi Desert.

Sustainable Solutions

The world is running out of scant resources and it is up to us as individuals to conserve and slow our rate of consumption. This can mean using less water in the home and cutting down on power to reverse an alarming upwards trend.
Solar hot water and electrical power generation has been helped along with the government's renewable energy credits which go a long way towards making this an affordable and attractive option. Electric or hybrid cars will also play their part although I think many people are more excited about the new 3D TVs just along the horizon. Speaking of hybrids, I read recently about the next generation of nuclear reactors, some of which are fission/fusion devices that are designed to be both safe and economical. Even James Lovelock of Gaia fame has come out in support of technology which may have had a bad press over the decades but has reached a level of maturity that makes it preferable to coal fired power that is dirty and dangerous to humankind.
A techno fix is all well and good but history tells us that more individual sacrifice is required in order to rein in pollution and all that goes with it including Global Warming. So walk instead of taking the car when possible. Turn off all electrical appliances and lights when not in use and try to reduce your carbon footprint. Remember the old say; if you want something done, do it yourself.