When I first began to travel professionally, when I started working for National Geographic, we used to be warned about not drinking the local water from the tap. Today I would be more concerned about the tap water in parts of American than I would be in much of the rest of the world. Here's why. My suggestion to all of you is to have your water tested by a! n independent lab. It only costs a few dollars, and it may give you a surprise.
Right now there is another blown-out rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and FOUR major tar sands pipeline leaks in Alberta, Canada. We are experiencing a major continent wide slow motion environmental disaster going on within the carbon energy infrastructure and, as far as I can see, the only person in corporate media who is even talking about it is Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. And today! , the Republicans in the House gutted support for non-carbon energy.
I write to ask you to join 11 Nobel Laureates in Economics, other leading economists, and former government officials in endorsing the INFORM ACT (Intergenerational Financial Obligations Reform Act) at www.theinformact.org.
All endorsements will be included in a letter to Congress, which is posted on the website, that will appear early this fall in a full-page ad in the New York Times.
The INFORM ACT, which I drafted in large part with the assistance of Alan Auerbach, requires the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to do fiscal gap and generational accounting on an annual basis and, upon request by Congress, to use these accounting methods to evaluate major pieces of proposed legislation.
“Very leery” of going to a developing country like India or Thailand, which both draw so-called medical tourists, he ultimately chose to have his hip replaced in 2007 at a private hospital outside Brussels for $13,660. That price included not only a hip joint, made by Warsaw-based Zimmer Holdings, but also all doctors’ fees, operating room charges, crutches, medicine, a hospital room for five days, a week in rehab and a round-trip ticket from America.
There is lot of stuff flying around Pentagon these days. There is memo that underlies article next below but I haven't seen it yet, trying to get from Sister service. Irrespective of your opinion of publication, this might be very good week to buy current Army Times (12 Aug 2013) because it has some data and graphics I haven't previously seen about what may be coming. Trends I'm sensing so far:
Hardware is more important than humans.
Sequestration decrements will be largely borne by MILPERS and CIVPERS
Even if sequestration disappeared today, MILPERS and CIVPERS would be principal targets.
DoD is seeking to ((FUNDAMENTALLY)) change, in negative ways, compensation scheme for MILPERS.
DoD will seek to screw retirees under age 55 out of TRICARE coverage
Cart is clearly before horse — DEPSECDEF has relayed SECDEF's guidance to cut HQs by 20 percent without determining what functions will no longer be performed. Long experience is being ignored: downsizing, rightsizing, doing more with less don't work. Less is less and, generally, all you can do with less is less.
SECDEF appears to be disproportionately influenced by one particular retired Marine Reserve GO who also happens to be an executive of one of the big defense contractors.
DOD Memo Provides Specifics for Headquarters Spending Cuts
This is a truly Satanic combination. The Southweb article sums it up best:
“While they may not be owned by the same individuals, one thing is clear: the relationship between these two companies is enough cause for alarm.”
So Monsanto has not bought Blackwater, but is leveraging them against its opponents, and one can only imagine what Blackwater might offer to do in Africa, where murder by mob is done every day with impunity, led by CIA with its drones. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation connection is highlights in the 3 August piece, they are known for their eugenics agenda that is not well covered by the mainstream media.
The truth of the matter is that Academi (Blackwater) was purchased by private investors, and the heavily sourced article written by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation actually says nothing about Monsanto buying Blackwater.
What the articles does say, however, is that Monsanto and Blackwater are indeed working together to target anti-Monsanto activists and organizations.
The more one shares, the more one undermines a future patent application and a system that encourages privatization [profit for the few, suffering for the many]
Charles Davis
Al Jazeera, 3 August 2013
EXTRACT:
Signed into law by President Bill Clinton, the Economic Espionage Act of 1995 makes it a federal offence punishable by up to 15 years in prison for someone to “knowingly” deliver a “trade secret” into the hands of a foreign government or institution. As written, that means even if someone had the most honest of intentions – hey, maybe people outside of America get cancer too – they would still be considered a spy for letting a scientific secret cross a body of water. If that secret is ever disclosed, it will be disclosed on corporate America's terms. And it will make someone a lot of money.
Consider the case of Hua Jun Zhao. A researcher at Wisconsin Medical College, Zhao was recently accused of stealing several vials of a potentially cancer-fighting compound he was working on with the intent of passing it on to a university in China, allegedly as his own work. If true, Zhao certainly committed a crime – theft – and perhaps intended to commit academic fraud. But when the FBI came knocking, the $8,000 in missing goods was treated as espionage. Zhao, according to the bureau, was a spy.
In a press release, the FBI alleged that the Chinese native used his position to “illegally acquire patented cancer research material and to have taken steps to provide that material to Zhejiang University in China”. Among the goals served by his arrest, the bureau stated, was protecting America's “competitiveness in an age of globalisation”. By law, the espionage case had to first be approved by a top official at the Justice Department.
How to turn the US-Mexican border into a war zone [profitable for the few]
Todd Miller
al Jazeera, 3 August 2013
The first thing I did at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix this March was climb the brown “explosion-resistant” tower, 10 metres high and 3 metres wide, directly in the centre of the spacious room that holds this annual trade show. From a platform where, assumedly, a border guard would stand, you could take in the constellation of small booths offering the surveillance industry's finest products, including a staggering multitude of ways to monitor, chase, capture, or even kill people, thanks to modernistic arrays of cameras and sensors, up-armored jeeps, the latest in guns, and even surveillance balloons.
Although at the time, headlines in the Southwest emphasised potential cuts to future border-security budgets thanks to Congress's “sequester”, the vast Phoenix Convention Center hall – where the defence and security industries strut their stuff for law enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – told quite a different story. Clearly, the expanding global industry of border security wasn't about to go anywhere. It was as if the milling crowds of business people, government officials, and Border Patrol agents sensed that they were about to be truly in the money thanks to “immigration reform”, no matter what version of it did or didn't pass Congress. And it looks like they were absolutely right.
All around me in that tower were poster-sized fiery photos demonstrating ways it could help thwart massive attacks and fireball-style explosions. A border like the one just over 161 kilometres away between the United States and Mexico, it seemed to say, was not so much a place that divided people in situations of unprecedented global inequality, but a site of constant war-like danger.
Below me were booths as far as the eye could see surrounded by Disneyesque fake desert shrubbery, barbed wire, sand bags, and desert camouflage. Throw in the products on display and you could almost believe that you were wandering through a militarised border zone with a Hollywood flair.
To an awed potential customer, a salesman in a suit and tie demonstrated a mini-drone that fits in your hand like a Frisbee. It seemed to catch the technological fetishism that makes Expo the extravaganza it is. Later I asked him what such a drone would be used for. “To see what's over the next hill,” he replied.
When I first began to travel professionally, when I started working for National Geographic, we used to be warned about not drinking the local water from the tap. Today I would be more concerned about the tap water in parts of American than I would be in much of the rest of the world. Here's why. My suggestion to all of you is to have your water tested by a! n independent lab. It only costs a few dollars, and it may give you a surprise.
