Blog for a Better World

Hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.  As one of the intercept operators said, these were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in the area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones. US military officers, American journalists and American aid workers were routinely intercepted as they called their offices or homes in the United States.  Intercept operators listened into hundreds of Americans using phones in Baghdad’s Green Zone from late 2003 to November 2007.  

Coal is finally getting a bad rap.  For example, in America, a judge in Georgia has cancelled a permit for a new coal power station citing carbon dioxide emissions concerns. Environmentalists think this is the beginning of the end of conventional coal-fired power plants, because of the enormity of their emissions.  In the UK, a think tank is recommending a minimum two-year block on coal-power investment. The Institute for Public Policy Research says this is needed to hit Europe’s 21% reduction in heavy industry greenhouse emissions by 2020.  Finally, in Australia, eco-campaigners have decried a new AU$750 million coal power plant as “complete madness”.