Wednesday, April 14, 2004
FLIPPITY FLOPPITY FLOOP
Bush opposed raiding the Social Security surplus before he supported it.
“I’m going to set aside $2.4 trillion of Social Security surplus.” Bush, 10/26/00
“None of the Social Security surplus None of the Social Security surplus
will be used to fund other spending will be used to fund other spending
initiatives or tax relief.” initiatives or tax relief.” –President Bush’s FY 2002 Budget s FY 2002 Budget A Blueprint for New Beginnings A Blueprint for New Beginnings
As of today, every penny of 2.4 trillion Social Security surplus SPENT by Bush in tax cuts and other spending.
Source:http://budget.senate.gov/democratic/charts/2004/packet_thompsonhhshrng...
Bush opposed Nation Building before he approved of it.
“And so I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building.” – Bush, 10/11/00
"We are not into nation building."- Bush, 9/25/01
“America has assumed great responsibilities for Iraq's future.”- Bush, 7/23/03
Bush opposed the Creation of Cabinet Level Department of Homeland Security before he proposed it.
“There does not need to be a Cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security.” – Ari Fleischer, 10/24/01
“Tonight, I propose a permanent Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security to unite essential agencies that must work more closely together…” – Bush, 6/5/02
Bush opposed the creation of the 9/11 Commission before he supported it.
Bush supported carbon dioxide regulations before he opposed them.
As part of his presidential campaign, Bush proposed a "four-pollutant strategy" for curbing mercury, smog-causing nitrogen oxide, sulfur, and carbon dioxide.
In March of 2001, under pressure from lobbyists, Bush flip-flopped and refused to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from coal-burning power plants.Wednesday, April 14, 2004
TENET TESTIFIES: 'SYSTEM WAS BLINKING RED' BEFORE THE AUGUST 01 PDB MEMO
Panel Says Bush Saw Repeated Warnings
Reports Preceded August 2001 Memo
By Dana Priest
Washington Post
By the time a CIA briefer gave President Bush the Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief headlined "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," the president had seen a stream of alarming reports on al Qaeda's intentions. So had Vice President Cheney and Bush's top national security team, according to newly declassified information released yesterday by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In April and May 2001, for example, the intelligence community headlined some of those reports "Bin Laden planning multiple operations," "Bin Laden network's plans advancing" and "Bin Laden threats are real."
The intelligence included reports of a hostage plot against Americans. It noted that operatives might choose to hijack an aircraft or storm a U.S. embassy. Without knowing when, where or how the terrorists would strike, the CIA "consistently described the upcoming attacks as occurring on a catastrophic level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil," according to one of two staff reports released by the panel yesterday.
"Reports similar to these were made available to President Bush in the morning meetings with [Director of Central Intelligence George J.] Tenet," the commission staff said.
The information offers the most detailed account to date of the warnings the intelligence community gave top Bush administration officials, and it provides the context in which a CIA briefer put together a memo on Osama bin Laden's activities in the Aug. 6 brief for Bush.
"The system was blinking red," Tenet told the commission in private testimony, the panel's report noted.
Click here for the full Washington Post article.Wednesday, April 14, 2004
WHY ARROGANCE IS A POOR BATTLE TACTIC
British commanders condemn US military tactics
By Sean Rayment
London
Senior British commanders have condemned American military tactics in Iraq as heavy-handed and disproportionate.
One senior officer said that America's aggressive methods were causing friction among allied commanders and that there was a growing sense of "unease and frustration" among the British high command.
The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said part of the problem was that American troops viewed Iraqis as untermenschen - the Nazi expression for "sub-humans".
Speaking from his base in southern Iraq, the officer said: "My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are."
The phrase untermenschen - literally "under-people" - was brought to prominence by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, published in 1925. He used the term to describe those he regarded as racially inferior: Jews, Slavs and gypsies.
Although no formal complaints have as yet been made to their American counterparts, the officer said the British Government was aware of its commanders' "concerns and fears".
The officer explained that, under British military rules of war, British troops would never be given clearance to carry out attacks similar to those being conducted by the US military, in which helicopter gunships have been used on targets in urban areas.
British rules of engagement only allow troops to open fire when attacked, using the minimum force necessary and only at identified targets. The American approach was markedly different, the officer said.
"When US troops are attacked with mortars in Baghdad, they use mortar-locating radar to find the firing point and then attack the general area with artillery, even though the area they are attacking may be in the middle of a densely populated residential area.
"They may well kill the terrorists in the barrage, but they will also kill and maim innocent civilians. That has been their response on a number of occasions. It is trite, but American troops do shoot first and ask questions later."
The officer believed America had now lost the military initiative in Iraq, and it could only be regained with carefully planned, precision attacks against the insurgents.
"The US will have to abandon the sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut approach - it has failed," he said.
"They need to stop viewing every Iraqi, every Arab as the enemy and attempt to win the hearts and minds of the people."
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
A 'NAM BY ANY OTHER NAME
Bush says Iraq is not like Vietnam and that analogies send "the wrong message to our troops and ... the wrong message to the enemy." (like in Nam, the "My Country, Right or Wrong" and "America, Love It or Leave It" strategy.)
Some parallels with 'Nam:
1.) ESCALATION WILL WIN — We are in this far, so send more troops and we will win. Otherwise, those dead already will have died in vain.
2.) SET UP AND SUPPORT A PUPPET GOVERNMENT — We did this in serial fashion in South Vietnam, regardless of the people's will. We do the same with the so-called interim government in Iraq. In doing so, we ignore those with real power among Iraqis, as we did in Nam.
3.) THE DOMINO THEORY. In Nam, it was that if we don't fight, Communism will overtake surrounding countries like dominoes. In Iraq, it is that if we do fight, we will win and democracy will overtake surrounding countries. Wrong then. Wrong now. Iraq's insurgents are supported and financed by the surrounding Arab countries (our "allies") at present.
3.) SUPRESSION OF RESISTANCE — In Nam, along with government troops, we arrested and also killed South Vietnames who did not buy into our "vision" for Nam. We do the same now in Iraq…just as Saddam did before us.
4.) VIETNAMIZATION — In Nam, we were forever training South Vietnamese forces and trying to get them to fight against their own countrymen, the "Vietnamization" of the war. Our troops hated the S. Vietnamese forces cuz they did little or nothing in battle. We do the same with Iraqi troops today…with so far about the same results.
There's more, but this is good food for thought to start with.Tuesday, April 13, 2004
BU__SH__ BUMPERSNICKERS
Vote Kerry: He Sucks Less Than Bush
Bush/Cheney '04: Food lines and finer yachts
Bush/Cheney '04: Four More Wars!
Bush/Cheney '04: Keeping you safe and in hock.
Bush/Cheney '04: Offshore some more!
Bush/Cheney '04: High Tech is so yesterday
Bush/Cheney '04: Jobless? Just go shopping
Bush/Cheney '04: But it *IS* a recovery!
Bush/Cheney '04: Osama who?
Bush/Cheney '04: Put it on my Visa
Bush/Cheney '04: Visas for all
Bush/Cheney '04: United States of Mexico
Bush/Cheney '04: Jobless? Iraq is hiring
Bush/Cheney '04: Minimum wage for the middle class
Bush/Cheney '04: Fries with that?
Bush/Cheney '04: You didn't need that pension, did you?
Bush/Cheney '04: Jobless? Not *my* friends...
Bush/Cheney '04: Billionaires united
Bush/Cheney '04: The rich get... everything
Bush/Cheney '04: A jet in each private hangar
Bush/Cheney '04: Dick and i don't need overtime, why should you?
Bush/Cheney '04: Jobless? See your local recruiter
Bush/Cheney '04: Corporations on the move!
Bush/Cheney '04: Prosperity in Bangalore
Bush/Cheney '04: Theese eese White Hose sweetch-board, you call for
who?
Bush/Cheney '04: One World! Third World!
Bush/Cheney '04: Jobless? Wal-Mart has felt-tips and cardboard
Bush/Cheney '04: Student loans: invest in the poorhouse!
Bush/Cheney '04: Compassionate Colonialism
Bush/Cheney '04: Jobless? Sell some more stock
Bush/Cheney '04: Get used to it!
Bush/Cheney '04: Drugs for seniors-- valium stops hunger
Bush/Cheney '04: Stay the course, outsource
Bush/Cheney '04: Leave no billionaire behind
Bush/Cheney '04: Jobless? Sell a baseball team
Bush/Cheney '04: 87 billion is a down payment
Bush/Cheney '04: Making the world a better place, one country at a
time
Bush/Cheney '04: WMD = We Make Dough
Bush/Cheney '04: Vote with your Cayman Islands account
Bush/Cheney '04: The last vote you'll ever have to cast
Bush/Cheney '04: Sponsored by Diebold voting machines
Bush/Cheney '04: This time, elect us!
Bush/Cheney '04: Or else
Bush/Cheney '04: Apocalypse Now!
Bush/Cheney '04: John Ashcroft *knows* where you live
Bush/Cheney '04: Jobless? Lower your standards
Bush/Cheney '04: Putting the "con" in conservatism
Bush/Cheney '04: Because fascism is fashionable
Bush/Cheney '04: Thanks for not paying attention
Bush/Cheney '04: No lobbyist turned away
Bush/Cheney '04: The economy's stupid!
Bush/Cheney '04: Because wage slavery is wunnerful!
Don't think. Vote Bush!
George W. Bush: A brainwave away from the presidency
George W. Bush: It takes a village idiot
George W. Bush: The buck stops somewhere else
George W. Bush: I thought Bangalore was on some reservation
George W. Bush: What this country needs is a good five cent wage
George W. Bush: My daddy taught me the value of a loaf of bread
United Corporations of America
Vote Bush in '04: Because dictatorship is easier
Vote Bush in '04: It's a no-brainer!
BU__SH__!
Bush/Cheney '04: Because the truth just isn't good enough.
Bush/Cheney '04: Jobless? Who cares?Tuesday, April 13, 2004
HI-OINKTANE GAS
We must reduce our dependance on foreign oil. We must recycle and reuse our waste products. Sounds to me like this is a win-win solution:
Pig Manure Can Become Crude Oil
By JIM PAUL, Associated Press Writer
URBANA, Ill. - A University of Illinois research team is working on turning pig manure into a form of crude oil that could be refined to heat homes or generate electricity.
Years of research and fine-tuning are ahead before the idea could be commercially viable, but results so far indicate there might be big benefits for farmers and consumers, lead researcher Yanhui Zhang said.
"This is making more sense in terms of alternative energy or renewable energy and strategically for reducing our dependency on foreign oil," said Zhang, an associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering. "Definitely, there is potential in the long term."
The thermochemical conversion process uses intense heat and pressure to break down the molecular structure of manure into oil. It's much like the natural process that turns organic matter into oil over centuries, but in the laboratory the process can take as little as a half-hour.
A similar process is being used at a plant in Carthage, Mo., where tons of turkey entrails, feathers, fat and grease from a nearby Butterball turkey plant are converted into a light crude oil, said Julie DeYoung, a spokeswoman for Omaha, Neb.-based Conagra Foods, which operates the plant in a joint venture with Changing World Technologies of Long Island, N.Y.
Converting manure is sure to catch the attention of swine producers. Safe containment of livestock waste is costly for farmers, especially at large confinement operations where thousands of tons of manure are produced each year. Also, odors produced by swine farms have made them a nuisance to neighbors.
"If this ultimately becomes one of the silver bullets to help the industry, I'm absolutely in favor of it," said Jim Kaitschuk, executive director of the Illinois Pork Producers Association.
Zhang and his research team have found that converting manure into crude oil is possible in small batches, but much more research is needed to develop a continuously operating reaction chamber that could handle large amounts of manure. That is key to making the process practicable and economically viable.
Zhang predicted that one day a reactor the size of a home furnace could process the manure generated by 2,000 hogs at a cost of about $10 per barrel.
Big oil refineries are unlikely to purchase crude oil made from converted manure, Zhang said, because they aren't set up to refine it. But the oil could be used to fuel smaller electric or heating plants, or to make plastics, ink or asphalt, he said.
"Crude oil is our first raw material," he said. "If we can make it value-added, suddenly the whole economic picture becomes brighter."
___
Zhang's site: http://www.age.uiuc.edu/faculty/yhz/index.htmSunday, April 11, 2004
READY? ON THE COUNT OF THREE, EVERYONE... SHIFT THE BLAME!
Neocons See Iran Behind Shi'ite Uprising by Jim Lobe
Neo-conservatives close to the administration of President George W Bush are pushing for retribution against Iran for, they say, sponsoring this week's Shiite uprising in Iraq led by radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
Despite the growing number of reports that depict the fighting as a spontaneous and indigenous revolt against the U.S.-led occupation, the influential neo-cons are calling on Bush to warn Tehran to cease its alleged backing for al-Sadr and other Shia militias or face retaliation, ranging from an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities to covert action designed to overthrow the government.
But independent experts say that while Iran has no doubt provided various forms of assistance to Shia factions in Iraq since the ouster of former President Saddam Hussein one year ago, its relations with Sadr have long been rocky, and that it has opposed radical actions that could destabilize the situation.
"Those elements closest to Iran among the Shiite clerics (in Iraq) have been the most moderate through all of this," according to Shaul Bakhash, an Iran expert at George Mason University here.
Many regional specialists agree that Iran has a strategic interest in avoiding any train of events that risks plunging Iraq into chaos or civil war and partition.
Neo-conservatives centered in Vice President Dick Cheney's office and among the civilian leadership in the Pentagon have strongly opposed any détente with Iran, and have frequently blamed it for problems the United States has encountered in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Neo-conservatives outside the administration, such as former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and his colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Michael Ledeen and Reuel Marc Gerecht, called even before the Iraq war for Washington to support indigenous efforts to oust the "mullahcracy" in Tehran, which is seen as an archenemy of both the United States and Israel.
Some neo-conservatives have seized on Sadr's uprising as a new opportunity both to raise tensions against Iran and to divert attention from Washington's bungling of relations with the Shia community in Iraq.
Top U.S. officials both here and in Iraq have not yet named Iran as the hidden hand behind Sadr, although a senior reporter at the right-wing Washington Times, Rowan Scarborough, quoted unnamed "military sources" Wednesday as telling him that Sadr "is being aided directly by Iran's Revolutionary Guard and by Hezbollah, an Iranian-created terrorist group based in Lebanon."
Unnamed "Pentagon officials" gave a similar account to the New York Times, although Times reporter James Risen stressed that CIA officials disagreed with that analysis, adding, "some intelligence officials believe that the Pentagon has been eager to link Hezbollah to the violence in Iraq to link the Iranian regime more closely to anti-American terrorism."
The Iran hand was first raised in connection with Sadr's revolt by Michael Rubin, who just returned as a "governance team advisor" for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq to his previous position as a resident fellow at AEI.
In a column published in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, he complained that Washington and the CPA had failed to provide liberal and democratic Iraqi leaders with anything like the kind of support that Iran was supplying to radical Shia leaders and their "gangs."
Rubin said that on a visit to the Shia-dominated south he found that Iranians were pouring money and arms to key Islamist parties, including the Da'wa, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and Sadr himself, whose rise over the past year, according to Rubin, is explained by the "ample funding he receives through Iran-based cleric Ayatollah Kazem al Haeri, a close associate of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini."
Another senior CPA adviser, Larry Diamond, a neo-conservative who specializes in democratization at the California-based Hoover Institution, told IPS this week that Sadr's Mahdi Army, and other Shia militias, are being armed and financed by Iran with the aim of imposing "another Iranian-style theocracy."
"Iran is embarked on a concerned, clever, lavishly-resourced campaign to defeat any effort for any genuine pluralist democracy in Iraq," said Diamond. "The longer we wait to confront the thug, the more troops he'll have in his army, the more arms he'll have and financial support – virtually all coming from Iran – the more he will intimidate and kill sincere democratic actors in the country, and the more impossible our task at building democracy will become."
"I think we should tell the Iranian regime that if they don't cease and desist, we will play the same game, that we will destabilize them," he added.
On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page took up the same theme, arguing that Sadr has talked "openly of creating an Iranian-style Islamic Republic in Iraq (and) has visited Tehran since the fall of Saddam. "His Mahdi militia is almost certainly financed and trained by Iranians," the editorial continued, adding, "Revolutionary Guards may be instigating some of the current unrest."
"As for Tehran, we would hope the Sadr uprising puts to rest the illusion that the mullahs (in Tehran) can be appeased. As Bernard Lewis teaches, Middle Eastern leaders interpret American restraint as weakness. Iran's mullahs fear a Muslim democracy in Iraq because is it a direct threat to their own rule."
"If warnings to Tehran from Washington don't impress them, perhaps some cruise missiles aimed at the Bushehr nuclear site will concentrate their minds," the Journal suggested.
On Wednesday, New York Times columnist William Safire asserted the existence of an axis involving Sadr, Iran, Hezbollah and Syria. "We should break the Iranian-Hezbollah-Sadr connection in ways that our special forces know how to do," he wrote.
But this line of reasoning appears particularly curious to Bakhash, who notes that the Sadr family, including Moqtada himself, is precisely the kind of Iraqi Shiite who would be deeply suspicious of Tehran.
"Sadr's father was a strong Iraqi nationalist, like Moqtada himself," he told IPS. "He often used to question why there were in Iraq ayatollahs who spoke Arabic with a Persian accent."
Like other experts, Bakhash believes that Iran has indeed been heavily involved with the Iraqi Shia community, but sees the leadership providing far more support to SCIRI and its Badr brigades than to Sadr, who, from Tehran's point of view, is seen as untrustworthy.
Bakhash also questions the neo-conservative assumption that Iran wants to destabilize Iraq now. "Obviously the Iranians are not unhappy to see the Americans discomfited in Iraq, but I don't think it's the policy of the Iranian government to destabilize Iraq right along its own border," he said.
Middle East historian Juan Cole of the University of Michigan also questions the notion of a link between Iran and Sadr in the current uprising. While Sadr's views on theocratic government are consistent with those of Iranian hardliners, according to Cole, his outspoken Iraqi nationalism poses a major challenge to Khameini's claim to authority over all Shiite religious communities, including those outside Iran.
Contrary to the Journal's assumptions, adds Cole, Sadr did not receive much encouragement from the Iranian leaders he met in Tehran. "The message he got was that he should stop being so divisive and should cooperate more with the other Shiite leaders."
Geoffrey Kemp, an Iran specialist at the Nixon Center and Middle East adviser on former president Ronald Reagan's National Security Council staff, says he has little doubt the Iranians have influence with several different Shiite groups, and that there might even be "rogue elements" inside Iraq who back Sadr.
But he agrees that Tehran's strongest ties are with SCIRI and the Badr Brigades, who were trained by the Revolutionary Guard inside Iran during Hussein's rule. "The situation is far too complex to make simplistic statements about what Iran is or is not doing," Kemp told IPS. "But to suggest that this is an Iranian-inspired insurrection is a stretch."
"The neo-conservatives are all so heavily invested in the success of Iraq that instead of blaming the Pentagon for some extraordinary blunders, they want to blame everyone else – the State Department, the Iranians, the Syrians for the mess that was partly of their own making.
-------------------- Jim Lobe, works as Inter Press Service's correspondent in the Washington, D.C., bureau. He has followed the ups and downs of neo-conservatives since well before their rise in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=2282Sunday, April 11, 2004
TEXT OF THE PRESIDENTIAL DAILY BRIEFING AUGUST 6, 2001
Text of Aug. 6, 2001, memo to President Bush
This is the text of a declassified presidential daily intelligence briefing from Aug. 6, 2001 made public on Saturday by the White House. Portions marked "x" were blacked out before release.
Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US
Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the U.S. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America."
After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to xxxxxxxxxxx service.
An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an xxxxxxxxxx service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike.
The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Ladin's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US. Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that Bin Ladin lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own US attack.
Ressam says Bin Ladin was aware of the Los Angeles operation.
Although Bin Ladin has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Ladin associates surveilled our Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.
Al-Qa'ida members - including some who are US citizens - have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qa'ida members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our Embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.
A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.
We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a xxxxxxxxxx service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.
Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.Sunday, April 11, 2004
TODAY'S PETRIE DISH REPORT
Humanity continues to flush the planet down the toilet at an alarming rate:
Ocean 'dead zones' double in number since 1990
HANS GREIMEL
LARGE swathes of the world’s oceans are becoming "dead zones", polluted stretches of water in which fish cannot survive, the United Nations Environment Programme warned yesterday.
The UN identified nearly 150 dead zones around the globe last year, double the number in 1990, with some stretching across 27,000 sq miles, about the size of Ireland. Experts believe they now represent as big a threat to the world’s fish stocks as over-fishing.
Dead zones have long afflicted the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay, but are now spreading to other waters, such as the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Adriatic Sea, Gulf of Thailand and Yellow Sea, UNEP said.
They are also appearing off South America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. More areas are expected to be affected as countries develop.
The main cause is excess nitrogen run-off from farm fertilisers, sewage and industrial pollutants. The nitrogen triggers blooms of microscopic algae known as phytoplankton. As the algae die and rot, they consume oxygen, thereby suffocating everything from clams and lobsters to oysters and fish.
"Humankind is engaged in a gigantic, global experiment as a result of inefficient and often overuse of fertilisers, the discharge of untreated sewage and the ever-rising emissions from vehicles and factories," UNEP’s executive director Klaus Toepfer, said in a statement. "Unless urgent action is taken to tackle the sources of the problem, it is likely to escalate rapidly."
Dead zones are especially dangerous to fisheries because they afflict coastal waters where many fish spawn and spend most of their lives before moving to deeper water, said UNEP’s senior environmental affairs officer,, Marion Cheatle.
UNEP urged nations to co-operate in reducing the amount of nitrogen discharged into their coastal waters, in part by cutting back on fertiliser use or planting more greenery along feeder rivers.
The announcement comes as environment ministers from more than 150 nations gathered on the South Korean resort island of Jeju at UNEP’s eighth special session of the Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum.