I saw Michael Clayton last night. The issue of accountability, or the lack thereof, threads its way throughout the movie. Simply put, no one is willing to take responsibility for anything. And, depressingly true to life, there seems to be an inverse correlation between taking responsibility and the rich and powerful, as those with more power run away from it the fastest. There's the Westchester big wig who calls in Clooney, the fixer, to clean up the mess he left behind at a hit and run. And Don Jeffries – the CEO of UNorth, the agrobusiness giant – who signs and then suppresses a report laying out the health hazards of their product. And don't forget UNorth's top lawyer who sweeps the problems under the rug by outsourcing wiretapping, surveillance, and eventually murder. Even the title figure Clooney portrays does not eagerly don his superhero cape. He is dragged in after his friend and colleague is murdered, and he himself barely survives a car bombing. While Clooney's character sticks up for the little guys in the end, it's only once he begins to question what has become of his life that his values start to shift and realign.

Because water is a human right and not a commodity to be bought and sold for profit;
Because bottled water corporations are changing the very way people think about water and undermining people's confidence in public water systems;
Because up to 40% of bottled water in the U.S. and Canada is sourced from municipal tap water;
Because some bottlers have run over communities' concerns and the environment when they extract water and build bottling plants to get local spring and ground water;
Because bottled water travels many miles from the source, results in the burning of massive amounts of fossil fuels, and contributes to the billions of plastic bottles ending up in our landfills;
Because worldwide there is a need for investments in public water systems to ensure equal access to water, a key ingredient for prosperity and health for all people; and
Because solutions to ensuring water as a fundamental human right require people acting together and standing up for public water systems,

Think Outside the Bottle Pledge

I pledge to Think Outside the Bottle, which means:

With record low approval ratings for the Bush/Cheney regime and the albatross of an unpopular war hanging from the GOP's neck, do you think that a Democratic presidential candidate will win the White House, get us out of Iraq, and end our long national nightmare?

Think again – the mighty election theft machine Karl Rove used to steal the US presidency in 2000 and 2004 may be under attack, but it is still in place for the upcoming 2008 election.

With his usual devious mastery, Rove has seized upon the national outrage sparked by his electoral larceny and used it as smokescreen while he makes the American electoral system even MORE unfair, and even EASIER to rig. Thus the administration has fired federal attorneys when they would not participate in a nationwide campaign to deny minorities and the poor their access to the polls. It has spent millions of taxpayer dollars to install electronic voting machines that can be "flipped" with a few keystrokes. And under the guise of "reforming" our busted electoral system, it is setting us up for another presidential theft in 2008.

If Bush and Cheney attack Iran, we will almost certainly know it's coming. For months prior to the invasion of Iraq, even while the corporate media bombarded us with the pretense that Bush and Cheney had not yet decided on war, other stories further back in the pages of newspapers and on the internet informed us, or should have informed us, that an attack was coming.

Many of these stories involved the deployment of troops. (We were told that they were deploying "in case" there was to be a war.) With so many troops already in the area now, and with the attack on Iran likely not to include ground forces, we may not see the same volume of reports of this sort. Still, it is unlikely that no troops will let the word slip that an attack is really coming.

During the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, there were also stories about weapons production. Long before shocking and aweing Iraq with all those bombs, a major increase in bomb production and conversion to "smart bombs" was needed. This ought to be the case with Iran as well. Has anyone checked?