mostly nuggets

blessed britons

The foundations for apartheid were laid in the policies outlined by a commission set up in 1905 by the British High Commissioner in South Africa, Sir Alfred Milner. Asked to come up with strategies to deal with the 'Native question', the commission proposed segregation between black and white, and the creation of 'locations'for blacks on the fringes of the cities and the towns.

mad world

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was agreed to in 1992, and ... has been accepted by 181 governments... The developed nations committed themselves to 1990 levels of emissions by the year 2000, but this commitment was not legally binding. For the United States and several other countries, that was just as well, because they came nowhere near meeting it. In the US, for example, by 2000 carbon emissions were 14% higher than they were in 1990. Nor was the trend improving, for the increase between 1999 and 2000 was 3.1%, the biggest one year increase since the mid 1990s.

— Peter Singer

One World

the case was thin

Submitted by antarchi on May 18, 2007 - 05:57.

It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.