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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Change We Don't See | Military Industrial Ripoff

American cultural icons, apple pie, baseball, ...Image via Wikipedia
The New Contender

What Are the Biggest Financial Scandals in U.S. History?


CIVIL WAR PROFITEERING
During the tenure of Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, a conniving machine politician from Pennsylvania, corruption flourished during the Civil War. As a result of his sloppy practices, the federal government paid top dollar for shoddy blankets, tainted pork and beef, knapsacks that came unglued in the rain, uniforms that fell apart, and guns that blew the thumbs off the soldiers firing them. President Lincoln replaced Cameron after the secretary repeatedly issued supply contracts without competitive bidding, in violation of Lincoln's express orders.

"It's as American as Apple Pie !"




« Nuclear Progress Report | opit's Blog

The International Tax on the Use of Fire




Fitness Model posing with dumbell. Photo by Gl...
Image via Wikipedia
Posing with Dumbell - I couldn't resist.

Here's why it blew up.


Copenhagen destroyed by Danish draft leak,says India's environment minister




The outcome was determined by a failed "ambush", targeted at the leaders of emerging economies, by the host nation Denmark. This attempted to switch a new negotiating text for the existing UN texts.
( Sounds like Bait & Switch to me ! )




Then there's notice to all and sundry that the US will impose a global tax on the use of fire


Confidential document reveals Obama's hardline US climate talk strategy


Reinforce the PERCEPTION that the US is constructively engaged in UN negotiations in an effort to produce a global regime to combat climate change.


Have you ever heard a psyops program described with more clarity than that ?


Background on the media circus trying to paint our options to a black and white choice by scientists who cannot model a chaotic open system, but must pretend they can to avert our impending doom.


This "reliable intel" from the people who have killed on all continents on a covert budget from  flogging arms and smuggling drugs plus purloined public purse. Crooks,traitors and murderers in other words...the milk of human kindness overflowing from them.


Climate in Contention
There's no need for discussion ? Too urgent. Right.
Make rational decisions in a panic over something scientifically proven and so simple a fool can see it...and does. We getting over a little ice age and it's relatively warmer now the ice has melted...definite maybe to that - and it would be a surprise why ?

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And I found that a blog which contained information hard to come by was still churning it out.


Don't buy Obama's greenwashing of nuclear power


Last month, inspectors found dangerous chemicals in the groundwater near the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor. The situation demonstrates that from the mining of uranium ore to the storage of radioactive waste, nuclear reactors remain as dirty, risky, and as costly as they ever were. If President Obama's recent enthusiasm for nuclear reactors has led you to believe otherwise, you've bought in to the administration's greenwashing of nuclear. FromGrist, part of the Guardian Environment Network

That was from Politics 'n Poetry, which has been a rich source of information and  links on the nuclear power industry and uranium mining contamination.


The folks at nuclear news have that article available, as well as a fantastic sidebar, The Very Secret Costs of Nuclear Power.  From their site:
Well it is impossible for anyone to estimate the real costs of nuclear power, as only a narrow range of costs are discussed, even where the nuclear industry is supposedly privately owned.
1. The nuclear weapons industry is so connected with nuclear power, and the costs on the nuclear weapons industry are huge.
2. Where the nuclear industry is state owned - e.g. in France, Russia, China, South Korea, taxation, and the costs of electricity are manipulated, and figures given out for nuclear costs are not really reliable.
Here’s another story about Canada’s outrageous and extravagant spending on AECL flowing from the Chalk River Fiasco.
As a result, Ottawa allocated $824-million in the current fiscal year to the problem-plagued nuclear flagship as the government prepares to restructure it and sell its commercial division, according to supplemental estimates released late yesterday.
That’s a 50-per-cent increase from federal spending on AECL in the prior fiscal year. In today’s budget, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will likely provide hundreds of millions more to support AECL’s operating budget and design work on the advanced Candu reactor and refurbish Chalk River laboratories 

Our tax dollars are being sunk into what the PM himself called a “sinkhole” so that the feds can sell it for next to nothing?  WTF?  It seems that PMS definitely needs to hear from you on this ridiculous, costly venture!  Imagine, were that kind of money to be spent on real green technology…

Now you know who to blame for my picking up on uranium mining being something exceeding either catastrophe or disaster...as the consequences are little short of eternal.


Uranium - Mining and 'Depleted'

'Agent Orange' for the Ages

Speaking of which.



"They had said that by using satellite images they could hit very precisely targets without any chance of danger to surrounding crops" said Jim Farrell, Wellstone's spokesperson, who was also there. However that turned out not to be the case. "On the very first flyover by the cropduster, the U.S. Senator, the U.S. Ambassador to Colombia, the Lieutenant Colonel of the Colombian National Police, and other Embassy and congressional staffers were fully doused -- drenched, in fact -- with the sticky, possibly dangerous (herbicide) Roundup."

The use of these herbicides (both of which we refer to as Roundup in this story) has consistently produced health complaints from campesinos in the Colombian countryside. Those complaints have gone largely ignored by government officials in Washington and corporate honchos within Monsanto. Meanwhile, Monsanto's sordid history as the manufacturer of Agent Orange, a defoliant used during the Vietnam war, raises serious questions about its role in Colombia's drug war and the need for transparency in its dealings with Washington.

Bhopal: Generations of Poison
Nityanand Jayaraman
December 2nd, 2009

On the night of December 2-3, 1984, the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India leaked poisonous methyl iso cyanate into its densely populated neighborhood, killing 8,000 people in the immediate aftermath. 25 years later, Dow Chemical (which purchased Union Carbide in 2001) still refuses to clean up the site. But a new generation of Bhopal survivors is taking on the fight.

Asia Inhales While the West Bans the Deadly Carcinogen
Melody Kemp
February 16th, 2010

Asbestos, a known carcinogen, causes 100,000 occupational deaths per year, according to Medical News Today. Although it is banned in much of the world, asbestos is a common and dangerous building block in much of Asia’s development boom and its export remains both legal and profitable. Asbestos merchants, disputing World Health Organization (WHO) data and overwhelming scientific evidence, still claim that it is safe to use. 

Afghanistan Spy Contract Goes Sour for Pentagon
Pratap Chatterjee
March 16th, 2010

Mike Furlong, a top Pentagon official, is alleged to have hired a company called International Media Ventures to supply information for drone strikes and assassinations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to a complaint filed by the Central Intelligence Agency and revealed by the New York Times on March 15. The contract built upon his decade-long experience in hiring contractors to run propaganda programs for the military in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq. 





Protesters in Eastern India Battle Against Mining Giant Arcelor Mittal
Moushumi Basu
March 2nd, 2010

In the rural, tribal lands of Eastern India, protesters are going head-to-head with world steel giant Arcelor Mittal. “We may give away our lives, but we will not part with an inch of our ancestral land," the villagers cry. "The forest, rivers and land are ours. We don't want factories, steel or iron. Arcelor Mittal Go Back.”

The Enbridge Oil Sands Gamble
Andrew Nikiforuk
December 14th, 2009

Patrick Daniel, the CEO of Enbridge Inc, is bullish about the future of unconventional oil from Canada’s massive tar sand deposits. His company not only operates North America’s longest crude oil and liquid pipelines, but transports 12 percent of the oil that the U.S. imports daily. Canada’s bitumen, or dirty crude, lies under a forest area the size of England and is arguably the world’s last remaining giant oil field.
Shed a Tear for Our Democracy
Robert Weissman
January 22nd, 2010

Yesterday, in the case Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence election outcomes.
Money from Exxon, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer and the rest of the Fortune 500 is already corroding the policy making process. Now, the Supreme Court tells these corporate giants that they have a constitutional right to trample our democracy.



Temping Down Labor Rights: The Manpowerization of Mexico
Kent Paterson
January 6th, 2010

In the globalized electronics production chain, Mexico serves as the main assembler of Asian-produced components for electronics exported to the United States. Mexico's labor force is increasingly supplied by temporary workers employed through domestic and transnational corporations like Manpower.


Slash and Sprawl: U.S. Eastern Forests Resume Decline


Since the 1970s eastern forests have begun to diminish again; roughly 3.7 million hectares of forested land—an area larger than the state of Maryland—have been transformed into subdivisions, tree plantations and lunar-esque landscapes resulting from mountaintop removal mining. In fact, the latter activity alone eliminated 420,000 hectares of woodlands in the past two decades.


Five years after the Spectrum disaster, why are Bangladeshi workers still at risk?

April 11 marks the fifth anniversary of the collapse of the Spectrum/Shahriyar Sweater factory in Bangladesh, which killed 64 workers and injured 80, 54 of them seriously. The collapse focused global attention on the chronic safety problems in the Bangladesh garment industry.
The 2005 Spectrum factory collapse was not a natural disaster; the deaths and injuries were entirely preventable. The factory owners had blatantly violated building code and health and safety regulations, the Bangladeshi government had failed to enforce those regulations, and European retailers sourcing from the factory had failed to detect the serious problems at the factory.

And I noted this from a comment thread about the war cult

If anyone has any doubt as to how these foreign Countries feel about the U.S.A. get a load of these statistics:

HOW THE UN COUNTRIES VOTE......


Below are the actual voting records of various Arabic/Islamic States which are recorded in both the US State Department and United Nations records:

Kuwait votes against the United States 67% of the time

Qatar votes against the United States 67% of the time

Morocco votes against the United States 70% of the time

United Arab Emirates votes against the U.S. 70% of the time.

Jordan votes against the United States 71% of the time.

Tunisia votes against the United States 71% of the time.

Saudi Arabia votes against the United States 73% of the time.

Yemen votes against the United States 74% of the time.

Algeria votes against the United States 74% of the time.

Oman votes against the United States 74% of the time.

Sudan votes against the United States 75% of the time.

Pakistan votes against the United States 75% of the time.

Libya votes against the United States 76% of the time.

Egypt votes against the United States 79% of the time.

Lebanon votes against the United States 80% of the time.

India votes against the United States 81% of the time.

Syria votes against the United States 84% of the time.

Mauritania votes against the United States 87% of the time.

U S Foreign Aid to those that hate us


A question was asked about why foreign aid should be given to ingrates. Somehow I had trouble posting about aid that did not reach people displaced by American troops. The poor had to suffer exposure,starvation,thirst,displacement...target practice and more...while contributions were sold on the blaack market.  The phrase "Yankee,Go Home" is never understood to refer to a global system of military bases from which young armed bravos go off to commit murder and vandalism. What's not to like ?  Food Aid that comes from the USA because American farmers find it convenient to have crop subsidies...which undercut local self-sufficiency by destroying orderly marketing. Ditto for clothing drives.
Remember that one where Bremer's 100 Orders had destroyed Iraqi seed stocks ? The heritage of eons !

And just because Molly's Blog will never be read by so many - and that's a shame - her English links ( Yes, there are links in Spanish and French too )




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    PHILOSOPHY:
    A CONUNDRUM:
    Molly is proud to present the following philosophical problem from Mr Beer N'Hockey's Dope City Free Press blog. To say the least the problem that Beer presents in the following post deserves far more attention than those usually pondered in academia.
    BNHBNHBNHBNH

    Tell Me Why 
    As I was eating my breakfast (it will not be my liquor consumption that kills me), drinking my second cup of coffee (one cup is never enough), reading the newspaper (all politicians, cops and everyone else associated, however tenuously, with the fucking government is a fucking crook) and watching Ma shake her moneymaker (the bigger it gets the better I like it) out of the corner of my eye as she attended to her coffee shop's other customers on her busiest day (Friday), I got to thinking. Sonja says, "Don't think, just do." She is right, of course, but if our brains are roughly 75% beer, you cannot help but think now and again when you do not have a beer in one hand and a remote control in the other.


    This is what I was thinking - How the fuck do I keep on waking up and going to work day after day, hangover after hangover, week after week, month after month, year after motherfucking year? It does not make any sense. Firstly, you want to keep sleeping when the fucking alarm goes off; secondly, you have better shit to do than show up at the sawmill and pretend you give a shit about how much money your company is losing; thirdly, your head fucking hurts; fourthly, you put your life in danger driving on the highway to work with every other demented motherfucker in town, none of whom give a shit about anything but getting home later that day and having a few drinks (and about a quarter of them have already had a drink before they start their car in the morning); fifthly, after a few decades of work all you have to show for it is a broken down house, a broken down car and a body and mind so broken down if you could trade it in, like you can do with a broken down car, the only time a dealer would give you a dime for it would be at a push, pull, or drag sale.


    Metaphysicians, the motherfuckers who try to answer questions as yet unsatisfactorily answered in mankind's brief history, ought to spend more time figuring out why we keep on working instead of whether or not there is a God, and if there is, why are all his believers starting to make Charles Manson look lucid.
    BNHBNHBNHBNH
    Truer words were never spoken...Molly. Mr. Beer N'Hockey's blog is the only "personal blog" that I have ever come across that is actually worth following, as he shows the humour and greater meaning in the events of everyday life. Most personal blogs attempt to destroy both. Many great recommendations to this site.

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