(READ): Department for the Environment has worse recycling rate than national average…

 

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

The Government department in charge of the environment recycles less than the average household in Britain, according to new figures

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs recycled just 29 per cent of its waste last year.

In comparison, the national average is 35 per cent, while the top councils recycle more than 60 per cent of waste and companies like Boots recycle almost half their rubbish. Read More

(READ): Pentagon Grades Reporters’ War Coverage…

Source: Stars and Stripes/Newser

(Newser Summary) – With a view to trying to influence coverage of the war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon is grading journalists’ work, the Stars and Stripes reports. The military newspaper says it has documents that counter official denials of the practice, with coverage rated as “positive,” “neutral,” or “negative.” The documents also contain advice on how to “neutralize” reporters seen to have a less-than-positive slant.

The Pentagon has farmed out the analysis of reporters from some of America’s top newspapers to a controversial Washington public-relations firm; the Rendon Group denies it keeps a “ranking of reporters.” Fumes one servicemember: “It’s troubling that the military is contracting a private PR firm, paid with US taxpayer dollars, to profile individual reporters. It shows utter contempt for the Constitution, which we in the service pledge our lives to defend.”

—W. McCahill

(WATCH): Israelis restrict Palestinians’ water supply…

Source: The Real News Network (trnn.com)

World Bank report: Israelis have access to four times as much water as Palestinians due to restrictions

After World Bank issues report, commissioned by the Palestinian Authority on the condition of water accessibility in the West Bank, Israel claims the reports authors are biased. To understand the conditions on the ground, how they’ve been addressed, and whether the so-called peace process succeeded in addressing them, The Real News speaks to LifeSource Project, a non-profit organization focusing solely on the issue of water. Susan Koppelman and Taysir Arabasi tell The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky the Mountain Aquifer, the biggest supply of fresh underground water is pumped by Israel even though it lies almost entirely in the West Bank. They also speak about restrictions on Palestinians to dig water wells, and their dependence on the Israeli national water corporation, Mekorot.

(READ): Could Afghanistan Become Obama’s Vietnam? …

Source:  NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — President Obama had not even taken office before supporters were etching his likeness onto Mount Rushmore as another Abraham Lincoln or the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Yet what if they got the wrong predecessor? What if Mr. Obama is fated to be another Lyndon B. Johnson instead?

To be sure, such historical analogies are overly simplistic and fatally flawed, if only because each presidency is distinct in its own way. But the L.B.J. model — a president who aspired to reshape America at home while fighting a losing war abroad — is one that haunts Mr. Obama’s White House as it seeks to salvage Afghanistan while enacting an expansive domestic program.

In this summer of discontent for Mr. Obama, as the heady early days give way to the grinding battle for elusive goals, he looks ahead to an uncertain future not only for his legislative agenda but for what has indisputably become his war. Last week’s elections in Afghanistan played out at the same time as the debate over health care heated up in Washington, producing one of those split-screen moments that could not help but remind some of Mr. Johnson’s struggles to build a Great Society while fighting in Vietnam.

“The analogy of Lyndon Johnson suggests itself very profoundly,” said David M. Kennedy, the Stanford University historian. Mr. Obama, he said, must avoid letting Afghanistan shadow his presidency as Vietnam did Mr. Johnson’s. “He needs to worry about the outcome of that intervention and policy and how it could spill over into everything else he wants to accomplish.”

By several accounts, that risk weighs on Mr. Obama these days. Mr. Kennedy was among a group of historians who had dinner with Mr. Obama at the White House earlier this summer where the president expressed concern that Afghanistan could yet hijack his presidency. Although Mr. Kennedy said he could not discuss the off-the-record conversation, others in the room said Mr. Obama acknowledged the L.B.J. risk.

“He said he has a problem,” said one person who attended that dinner at the end of June, insisting on anonymity to share private discussions. “This is not just something he can turn his back on and walk away from. But it’s an issue he understands could be a danger to his administration.”

Another person there was Robert Caro, the L.B.J. biographer who was struck that Mr. Johnson made some of his most fateful decisions about Vietnam in the same dining room. “All I could think of when I was sitting there and this subject came up was the setting,” he said. “You had such an awareness of how things can go wrong.” Read More