Reading these kinds of stories about permanent environmental degradation really makes me wonder what kind of world will our children have?

(Liberally excerpted Sam Smith’s Undernews blog.)
Instant runoff voting is recommended in Robert Rule’s of Order and is used by the American Political Science Association to elect its president. The Academy of Motion Pictures uses a variation of it in nominations for the Oscars. In recent years, instant runoff voting has made rapid advances across the country, having won at the ballot in states such as California, Michigan and Washington. After a landslide vote in March, voters in Burlington, Vermont will use IRV to elect their major representatives starting in 2006. Voters in San Francisco gave IRV high marks after using it for the first time to elect their Board of Supervisors this past November. All overseas military voters from Arkansas will cast IRV ballots in upcoming runoffs. Additionally, IRV has garnered the support of groups such as the League of Women Voters, the Grange, and individuals such as Sen. John McCain, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. and DNC Chairman Howard Dean.

One revelation in the Downing Street memos that has not made its way into the mainstream U.S. media is the confirmation that the U.S. had been using napalm against Iraqis.

Defense Minister, Adam Ingram, admitted that the US had misled the British high-command about the use of napalm, but he would not comment on the extent of the cover up. The use of firebombs puts the US in breach of the 1980 Convention on Certain Chemical Weapons (CCW) and is a violation the Geneva Protocol against the use of white phosphorous, “since its use causes indiscriminate and extreme injuries especially when deployed in an urban area.”

Stories about the use of napalm first began to surface after the siege of Falluja where reports of innocent civilians dying and “melted” corpses aroused suspicion that the U.S. was using its new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77.

At the time the administration vehemently denied the stories, even lying to its British allies. But now the leaked British documents confirm that use.

WMDs have finally been found in Iraq–and we are the ones using them.

One has to wonder when the U.S. media will decide that this story is newsworthy.