After ten years of operation by private military and security (PMSC) contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq, what ethical lessons should we draw from their use?
Namely, that private sector contracting has become an integral part of modern international operations, and in Afghanistan and Iraq contracting has been largely fruitful, despite some well-publicized problems and the enormous difficulties inherent to reconstructions in the midst of violent conflicts.
Considering that Chapter 12 is best known as a chapter of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, the authors may have wished for another chapter number. On the other hand, considering the gap between some claims and evidence, perhaps it is appropriate.
In light of Sunday Times’ revelations concerning MEPs being paid cash to place amendments on financial reform, a report published today by SpinWatch exposes financial lobbying in Brussels.
The report, entitled, Doing God’s Work: How Goldman Sachs Rigs the Game details Goldman Sachs’ secret lobbying activities in the UK and Brussels and links to politicians. It exposes:
The extensive links between Goldman Sachs and the Conservative Party;
* Political donations totalling £8.5million to British politicians in the past decade from Goldman and ex-Goldman people;
* Goldman Sachs’ immense lobbying machine in Brussels, including active membership of over a dozen financial sector lobby groups;
* Extensive meetings between Goldman Sachs and Conservative MEPs including: 9 meetings in six months with a key MEP on the Parliament’s Economics and Monetary Committee; and a total of 36 meetings between just four Tory MEPs and Goldman Sachs, its lobby groups or PR companies acting on their behalf;
* The bank’s lobbying campaign to undermine political reform on derivatives and alternative investment funds including: private dinners and unminuted “after office hours” meetings, high-level conferences and targeted campaigns to Commission officials, MEPs and their assistants;
* How Goldman Sach’s lobbyists tried to undermine amendments in a key report on derivatives, seen as “financial weapons of mass destruction”;
* The bank’s lobbying enabled them to gamble on food futures and drive up prices.
Report author, journalist Andy Rowell said: “A year ago, David Cameron said that lobbying was the next big scandal waiting to happen. This report shows that banks like Goldman Sachs – who are intricately connected to the Tories – continue to lobby to get what they want.”
Rowell continued: “The entire regulatory process – and the lobbying activity that surrounds it – has to become significantly more transparent and accountable. If it is allowed to be captured by bankers, the next financial crisis will only be a matter of time.”
The report is being published just as the debate on financial reform in Brussels reaches a crucial stage. The parliament and commission are finalising plans for reform of the OTC Derivatives market as well as Credit Default Swaps.
It also comes as the government is due to launch a consultation on a statutory register of lobbying, for the UK.
Interesting…..as pointed out in the article, most people defer to the eminence of the individual and not to the substance of the message…..and then there is the criminal obfuscation of Wall Street.
Johnny Carson was in top form, but the show could have bogged down if his guest had delved into subtleties or overly serious discussion. However, Ehrlich had the perfect solution. He took a piece of posterboard and wrote in large letters for the TV audience:
D = N * I
“In this equation,” he explained, “D stands for damage to the environment, N stands for the number of people, and I stands for the impact of each person on the environment. This equation shows that the more people, the more pollution. We cannot control pollution without controlling the number of people.”
Johnny Carson looked at the equation, scratched his head, made a remark about never having been good at math, and commented that it all looked quite impressive.
The UK government is holding a consultation about what sort of patent licenses an “open” standard should require. Anyone that develops free software (free as in freedom, not a matter of price) and would like it to be used in the UK has reason to be concerned with this, along with anyone that uses or distributes free software in the UK.
One option under consideration is to demand the patent holder give everyone a royalty-free patent license for implementing the standard. That at least permits free software to support the standard.
The other option is a criterion called “FRAND”, which claims to mean “Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory”. What it really means is that the patent holder must publish terms and allow anyone to buy a license on those terms. The terms are often such as to exclude free software entirely from implementing the standard.
Sixteen years ago, Pingtan Island, just north west of Taiwan, was the center of Chinese military energies to intimidate Taiwanese voters against electing a pro-independence president. Major amphibious operations were staged, some with catastrophic loss of life by military personnel because of bad weather. This also was the first time China attempted to maintain continuous air operations over the Taiwan Strait. That also proved beyond Chinese capabilities.
These complemented the dramatic and sensational Chinese short range ballistic missile shots into Taiwan's two main ports. The missile launches might be compared to the US launching missiles into Pearl Harbor to prevent Hawaii from seceding from the US.
A key difference was that the Chinese missiles were so inaccurate, that no one knew whether they would launch much less whether they would stay on target. The danger was that a ballistic missile might veer off course and strike Taiwan, rather than the ocean. The missiles were so unreliable that the risk of a stray missile was very real. With only luck, they did not hit land or ships in the harbor which would have sparked general war in 1996.
The US sent two aircraft carrier task groups to defend Taiwan in 1996, forcing the Chinese to back down and inflicting a humiliating political defeat on the communist mandarins in Beijing. At one point, during turnover, three carriers were present to defend Taiwan. The Chinese intimidation effort failed on every level. Even the weather was hostile to the Chinese.
This week China published details of its plans for the Pingtan Comprehensive Economic Zone (CEZ) through the approval and promulgation of the General Development Plan for the Pingtan CEZ. Mainland China officials have emphasized the “importance” of the plan and the CEZ.
The Chinese military fiasco during the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis ensured that the communist party leaders would never again allow the People's Liberation Army leaders to have their way in solving any national security problems.
(NaturalNews) Marijuana prohibition currently costs taxpayers billions of dollars a year to enforce, and it accomplishes little or nothing beneficial in terms of economic benefits. On the contrary, legalizing marijuana would not only save taxpayers billions of dollars a year in unnecessary costs, but it would also jumpstart the economy to the tune of $100 billion a year or more, say some economists.
Last year, over 850,000 people in America were arrested for marijuana-related crimes. Despite public opinion, the medical community, and human rightsexperts all moving in favor of relaxing marijuana prohibition laws, little has changed in terms of policy.
There have been many great books and articles detailing the history of the drug war. Part of America’s fixation with keeping the leafy green plant illegal is rooted in cultural and political clashes from the past.
However, we at Republic Report think it’s worth showing that there are entrenched interest groups that are spending large sums of money to keep our broken drug laws on the books:
1.) Police Unions: Police departments across the country have become dependent on federal drug war grants to finance their budget. In March, we published a story revealing that a police union lobbyist in California coordinated the effort to defeat Prop 19, a ballot measure in 2010 to legalize marijuana, while helping his police department clients collect tens of millions in federal marijuana-eradication grants. And it’s not just in California. Federal lobbying disclosures show that other police union lobbyists have pushed for stiffer penalties for marijuana-related crimes nationwide.
The maps in this web page are astonishing – it shows the sites of 63 active drone sites in the US. Officials were forced to reveal it after a FOIA lawsuit.
The real question, which the article does not explore much, is what kind of drone missions will these sites support? Will they support another leg in the elite's plan to conduct population reduction, sending out killer drones to cull the overeaters? Given the military and federal locations of some drone sites, such an impression is strengthened by an interesting fact revealed in one of the descriptions of the map for the DC area: “The Beltway around Washington DC has the highest concentration of urban and suburban drone sites, including the U.S. Marine Corp base as Quantico Station, Virginia.” Perhaps drone-generated genocide is too over-the-top. Maybe they are using them to merely assert much more control and oversight of the population, gathering much more private information more cheaply and effectively.
