Few Americans likely noticed when a new website, Let Them Return.com, run by the Chagossian Refugee Committee, launched two weeks ago. With scant coverage from the blogs or press, the site received about as much attention in the U.S. as the story of the Chagossians themselves, a group of indigenous people who were expelled from the island of Diego Garcia in the 1960s and 1970s by the U.S. and British governments.

"The story is almost entirely overlooked by the U.S. media," says David Vine, an assistant professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C. who is writing a book on the plight of the Chagossian people. "People may know there is a U.S. military base there, but they don't know the history of Diego Garcia."

Once home to about 2,000 Chagossians, Diego Garcia, a V-shaped, 13-mile-long island situated between Africa and Indonesia in the Indian Ocean, is now solely used as a U.S. military installation. The base has been instrumental in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and according to a New York Times story, it was also used as a fueling stopover for at least one prisoner bound for Guantanomo Bay in Cuba.

Since their removal, the Chagossians, most of whom are scattered in Mauritius and Seychelles, have sued for the right to return home to their island. Twice they have won in Britain's lower courts, and last May they won once again in the Court of Appeals. Yet the British government has continued to file appeals, and in June, the case will be heard by the High Court, Britain's version of the Supreme Court. (A similar case was brought against the U.S. government, but ultimately dismissed in 2006.)

"What they have done to us is illegal," says Oliver Bancoult, the London-based spokesman for the group who has led the legal battle. "Since 1997, we have been fighting with the British government to get back our rights." With some of the funds raised through the website, Bancoult plans to bring 2,500 Chagossians from Mauritius to London in June, hoping that their physical presence will impact the court decision.

According to Vine, a series of covert deals between the United States and Britain starting in the 1960s helped secure the island as a U.S. base. Beginning in 1968, any Chagossians who left the island and traveled to Mauritius for medical treatment or vacation were forcibly barred from returning home. Three years later, the U.S. had stepped up its conversion of the island into a military base. As Vine wrote for the Washington Post: "In 1971 the U.S. Navy began construction on Diego Garcia and ordered the British to complete the removals. First British agents and U.S. soldiers on Diego Garcia herded the Chagossians' pet dogs into sealed sheds and gassed and burned them in front of their traumatized owners awaiting deportation. Then, between 1971 and 1973, British agents forced the islanders to board overcrowded cargo ships and left them on the docks in Mauritius and the Seychelles."

The conditions in Mauritius were a stark contrast to life on Diego Garcia. A 2004 UK film, Stealing a Nation, shows the tenement-like structures the Chagosssians were now forced to live in. According to Vine, the islanders had come from a life that wasn't rich in material terms, but comfortable and secure. "On the island, they had jobs, food, health care, retirement benefits, their own land," he says. "And then they were dumped in a place where there was no security, no jobs, and no health care."

As a result, the effects of expulsion have lasted generations, says Vine. "They are still deeply impoverished," he notes. "There has been some improvements, but they are still the poorest of the poor."

The U.S. military base takes up only about one third of the island, so it's entirely feasible that the Chagossians could return. Ironically, the U.S. allows other area islanders to come and work at the base, but the former inhabitants remain barred from entering.

The military also bars civilians from entering the island, Vine says, which makes it hard to pitch the Diego Garcia story to the media. "Editors will tell me, 'Well, we can't send a reporter there,'" says Vine, whose book Island of Shame will published next year by Princeton University Press. Additionally, he believes that the U.S. media has little interest in covering the story because of its location. "This is a story about a small group of people in the Indian Ocean," he says. "It's very far away."

Diego Garcia may be far away, but Propeller member Berkeley certainly noticed the story on the AntiWar.com site (where Vine's story appeared), one of many web sites that he reads every few days. "It's a story that gives an excellent brief summary of the military take-over, " he writes in email. "And it [covers] the crime of removing the inhabitants, and the CIA prison."

As for Bancoult, he is currently in the midst of a two-week tour in America, hoping to raise awareness about the Chagossian people and their story. "I know I have to do a lot of work to let people know," says Bancoult. "But before [their expulsion], people were living in peace on Diego Garcia."

When a bomb went off in Times Square in the early morning hours of March 6, David Karnes, an entertainment lawyer from Los Angeles, became one of the first suspects. Due to a set of circumstances that made him, in the words of one investigator, the "unluckiest person" in the world, he was immediately tried and found guilty by the media. Almost every newspaper account of the bombing referenced Karnes as a possible suspect.

Why was Karnes even mentioned? Shortly before the bombing, he had sent multiple documents, including a photo of himself in front of the Times Square recruiting station, to Democratic members of Congress. The written material expressed the young lawyer's opposition to the Iraq war. And the caption underneath the photo read: "We Did It!" According to Karnes, the photo was part of a holiday card sent to family friends after the 2006 election, now being recycled to congratulate Democratic lawmakers on regaining a congressional majority. Within a couple of days (and after an FBI interrogation), Karnes was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Karnes was hardly the first person to be unjustly smeared by the media. Not everyone, however, gets the chance to air his or her grievances in the editorial pages of a major newspaper. Karnes penned an article in the Los Angeles Times on March 16, recounting his how quickly the media had piled on. He chronicled the rush to judgment he saw in print and on television, and the sarcastic response to his protestations of innocence. (As the Weekly Standard put it: "There's only one way we can know for sure. Waterboard him!")

According to Karnes, what upset him most was that nobody ever got a chance to anyone to read his writings. But in addition to publishing his editorial, the Los Angeles Times--one of the few papers that didn't reference his name in the first place--linked to PDF files of several of his essays. Readers could sample "Memorandum to Democratic Members of Congress," "Common Ground: Rebuilding the Democracy for the New Millennium," and "Elections 2008: Summary of Key Premises."

According to Nicholas Goldberg, editor of the Times' Op-Ed pages, the paper wanted to give readers the chance to study the documents. He also notes that while his department often commissions articles, it was Karnes who approached the paper in this case. "We didn't solicit the piece," explains Goldberg. " But we looked into it and thought it was an interesting story."

For some, the story may bring to mind the tale of Richard Jewell, a security guard who was an initial "person of interest" after the Olympic bombing in Atlanta in 1996. For Propeller user bruhaha, who submitted the story, it was the "bad luck coincidence of the whole thing" that made it worthy of attention. Yet bruhaha also saw a broader theme: "This caught my attention because it showed another case of the media jumping on a story, without the facts. When the story turns out to not be true, and [the media] are forced to admit that they were wrong, they oftentimes bury it where no one sees it. So many of the people who saw the original report still think it was true.... Also, what made this more interesting to me is that it was just some 'Regular Joe' doing what more of us should do: being a part of the political system, being active."

It's called the "Nano," and it's being hailed as the world's smallest and cheapest car. At roughly $2,000, the newest addition to the Tata Motors fleet has certainly caught the eye of India's growing middle class, and will probably help to boost the national economy a bit. But that's pretty much where the good news ends.

Whenever I visit Kolkata--the West Bengal site of the Singur factory, where the Nano will be built--I wake up in the mornings hacking. I have what I affectionately call "The Black Cough of Kolkata." It's due to the smog. The person-to-particle ratio here is so high that it's not even worth counting. Just imagine that every single one of the 14.8 million residents has his or her own unfiltered tailpipe to suck on every minute of the day, and you'll have some idea of what the air quality is like. Exaggerating? No, sadly, I'm not.

In addition to an exploding population, Kolkata has a massive car-density problem, with approximately 1,421 cars per kilometer and no emissions standards. Whether you're driving or walking, there is no escape from the smog (unless, ironically, you're in a sealed car). Ancient, dilapidated taxis and buses spew viscous clouds of dark gray soot every time they accelerate, causing severe irritation to the eyes, throat and lungs. To even entertain the idea of adding more pollution to this city, especially to make a profit, is nothing short of taking out a contract on the life of every last resident.

According to Ratan Tata, Chairman of the Tata Group, the Nano's design was inspired by the sight of an entire family crammed onto a tiny scooter--not an uncommon scenario in India's urban landscape. He thought that if he could build a car small enough and cheap enough for the lower middle class to afford, such families could get around in greater comfort and safety. But despite Mr. Tata's best intentions, the Nano may more prove more harmful than helpful, adding to what is already an unbearable level of smog.

A better option would be for the city to invest in public transportation. But even if we stick to the single-car-for-the-Indian-upwardly-mobile-sector argument, it would make more sense for the powerful and influential Mr. Tata to put his energies behind an electrically powered Nano. The car's small size is ideal for Kolkata's narrow, windy streets. The electric cars could be charged at simple "pumps" that could be easily installed as an addition to an existing structure. And the cost of charging the car would be cheaper for the user than the current cost of petrol.

Of course, the city's electrical infrastructure is in desperate need of an upgrade. Kolkata residents currently suffer nightly blackouts in what's called "load-shedding," as power is shifted from one neighborhood to another. In theory, the same neighborhood isn't supposed to be deprived of electricity several nights in a row, but it happens quite a lot.

Still, the cost of an upgrade to the city's power grid would be much less over time than a Beijing-style "clean up" of the constant, growing pollution. And the new petrol stations that will be built to accommodate the gas-powered Nano will only worsen the traffic and pollution problems--not to mention the fact that there isn't much space left to build them in.

The world over, people are attempting various solutions to environmental problems. Most are hard. This one isn't.

In May 1976, South African activist Steve Biko testified at the trial of nine of his colleagues, who were being charged with violating apartheid laws. At one point, the defense sought to clarify the origin of Biko's "Black Consciousness" movement, thinking this might help the accused. Like the American Black Power movement, Black Consciousness had been designed to combat demoralizing negative stereotypes.

Looking back to the previous decade, Biko recalled how he and his colleagues had decided that "they would no longer use the term Non-Whites, nor allow it to be used as a description of them, because they saw it as a negation of their being. They were being stated as 'non-something,' which implied that the standard was something and they were not that particular standard. They felt that a positive view to life, which is commensurate with the build-up of one's dignity and confidence, would be contained in a description which you accept, and they sought to replace the term Non-White with the term Black."

This simple tactic was remarkably effective in restoring some measure of personal dignity. It was the beginning of a process that led first to resistance, then to the Soweto uprising, and which eventually broke the back of apartheid in 1991.

On July 8, 2007, the opening day of the 98th annual NAACP convention, Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick presided over a mock funeral for the "N word." In the course of this ceremony, which included a horse-drawn casket, that controversial epithet was symbolically buried. The previous day, an identical ceremony took place in Houston. And back in April, on the heels of the Michael Richards and Imus fiascos, rap guru Russell Simmons called for a moratorium on the words "nigger," "bitch," and "ho" in songs played on the radio.

Even here at Netscape, we have software mechanisms to censor certain words. We've seen our users use them negatively toward others, and we want to do everything we can to ensure a consistently positive experience on our site.

The thing is: it isn't working. Not on our site, and not in society at large. Inappropriate verbal abuse continues to run rampant. Polemics abound, as we can see in the clip below from the 2007 Milken Institute Global Conference, and the NAACP and Russell Simmons weigh in, but nobody addresses the root of the problem: that we are all adults acting like spoiled, ill-mannered children. We need to stop. We need to reverse the tide.