[Biofuel] Another Nobel Peace Prize - Another Farce?
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/21-10-2013/125946-nobel_farce-0/ Another Nobel Peace Prize - Another Farce? 21.10.2013 Felicity Arbuthnot The Nobel Peace Prize brings another surprise - or farce, depending on your view. In relatively recent history, there has been Henry Kissinger (1973) architect supreme of murderous assaults on sovereign nations; the United Nations (2001) whose active warmongering or passive, silent holocausts (think UN embargoes) make shameful mockery of the aspirational founding words. In 2002 it was Jimmy Carter, whose poisonous Carter Doctrine of 1980 included declaring the aim of American control of the Persian Gulf as a US vital interest, justified by any means necessary. 2005 saw the Award go to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which promotes nuclear energy, creating the most lethal pollutants to which the planet and its population has ever been subjected. The nuclear waste from the industry the IAEA promotes, is now turned in to conventional, but never the less, nuclear and chemical weapons, by a sleight of hand of astonishing historical proportions.. Barack Obama (2009) has since declared himself executioner, by assassination in any form, any time, any place, anywhere, of anyone deemed by him (not judge or jury) connected to that now catch all phrase terrorism - half a world away. The Guantanamo concentration camp to which he unequivocally committed closing (17th November 2008,60 Minutes) asserting: I have said repeatedly that I will close Guantanamo and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America does not torture. And I'm gonna make sure that we don't torture ... those are part and parcel of an effort to ... regain America's moral stature in the world. Gulag Guantanamo remains with its prisoners, pathetic, desperate untried, or those ordered released, languishing year after year. America's moral stature has plummeted lower than the Nixon years, Libya lies in ruins, Syria barely survives, with the terrorists' backers aided via Washington's myriad back doors - and in global outposts, US backed or instigated torture thrives. 2012's Nobel lauded the European Union, which, since its inception, has crippled smaller trading economies, put barriers, unattainable conditions, or indeed, near extortion on trade with poorer countries (often former colonies.) EU Member States have also enjoined punitive embargoes against the most helpless of nations and enthusiastically embraced the latest nation target to be reduced to a pre-industrial age (correction: be freed to embrace democracy and the delights of rule by imposed despots, or a long, murderous, unaccountable foreign occupation and asset seizure.) Eminent International Law Expert, Professor Francis Boyle, called the EU Award: A sick joke and a demented fraud. This year's Peace Prize awarded, on Friday, 11th October, went to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) the Netherlands based organization, founded only in 1997, unheard of by most, charged with ridding the world of chemical weapons. The Award came ten days after an OPCW team arrived in Syria to eliminate the country's chemical weapons stock. A brief visit in August had them scuttling out, an apparent courage free entity, within days. President Assad had requested their investigations back in March, after it was claimed terrorist factions had used chemical weapons - insurgents now believed to be from some eighty three countries, backed primarily by the US, UK, Quatar and Saudi Arabia. The OPCW's return, on 1st October, is now touted as a breakthrough with an intransigent regime who had previously blocked them at every turn - rather than had the door open for them since March - the team, now billed as brave souls, working in a war zone - in which the Syrian people and government live - and die - every day - in a blood-soaked insurgency of that that famed international community's making. Is the annual Nobel justified anyway to an organization which has, in spite of the nightmare hazards to an entire population, agree to destroying an alleged 1,000 tons of highly dangerous chemicals (if we believe what we are told) in just months? In context, the US still has over three times as much chemical weaponry (estimated at over 3,100 tons) and has defied the specified April 2012 deadline for their disposal, on the basis that the dangers are so great that they cannot complete building the appropriate facilities until 2020 (some reports state 2023.) For the same reasons of technical and safety obstacles, Russia has a believed five times the US amount left to destroy.(i) Shameful double standards rule supreme. Wade Mathews, who worked on the U.S. chemical stockpile destruction, is uncertain that Syria can meet the deadline. He states that the U.S. disposal took billions of dollars, the cooperation of many levels of government - including
[Biofuel] US government, media silent on sacking of top nuclear officers
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/19/nuke-o19.html US government, media silent on sacking of top nuclear officers By Thomas Gaist 19 October 2013 A week has passed since the unprecedented back-to-back firings of two top US nuclear commanders, and the silence of the political and media establishment on the matter is deafening. While expert sources acknowledge that the firings of Vice Admiral Tim Giardina and Major General Michael Carey constitute an unprecedented crisis in the US military, the media have accepted the US military's presentation of it a matter of the two officers' personal problems. Air Force General Robert Kehler's assertion that both firings were the result of vaguely defined unfortunate behavioral incidents has been accepted, and the matter largely dropped. Such accounts are not only not credible, they entirely evade the issues involved in the sudden cashiering of officers controlling the most powerful nuclear arsenal on the planet, capable of destroying humanity many times over. As military sources or specialists of military affairs acknowledge, the firings reflect a deep crisis of the US military. In such a situation, neither the possibility of potentially catastrophic technical problems with the US nuclear arsenal nor of threatened military action against the US civilian government can be ruled out. A report on the firing of Vice Admiral Tim Giardina in the Marine Corps Times noted that such an event is exceedingly rare and perhaps unprecedented in the history of U.S. Strategic Command, which is responsible for all American nuclear war fighting forces, including nuclear-armed submarines, bombers and land-based missiles. Speaking to the WSWS, Peter Feaver, Professor of Political Science at Duke University and Director of the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy, observed: If you look over the last 4-5 years there have been quite a few senior officers who have been relieved for cause, quite a number of those in the last several years The military has been struggling to come to terms with why there are so many firings. Feaver's remarks point to anger in the military over the extraordinary number of high-ranking officers who have been sacked with little or no public explanation. Other top officers removed from command positions under Obama include General James Mattis, Maj. General Mark Gurganus, Maj. General Gregg Sturdevant, General Stanley A. McChrystal and General David Petraeus. McChrystal was removed as commander of US occupation forces in Afghanistan after making fun of Vice President Joe Biden in an interview with Rolling Stone, while Petraeus-a former commander of US forces in Iraq-was replaced, ostensibly due to a sex scandal. Carey was fired by the US Air Force on October 11. He commanded the 20th Air Force, including 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in silos across the northern US. Carey was on an unspecified temporary duty assignment at the time of the alleged infraction. Though US officials suggested alcohol was involved, they also denied that Carey had an alcohol problem. It remains unclear why he was sacked. Vice Admiral James Giardina was second in command of the US Strategic Command, having previously commanded a squadron of 10 Trident submarines armed with nuclear warheads. He allegedly was dismissed for playing at a casino with $1,500 worth of fake gambling chips. As for Mattis, the commandant of the Marine Corps who infamously declared in 2005 that it was a lot of fun to shoot Afghans, he stepped down as head of US Central Command earlier this year, reportedly over differences with the White House over US war policy against Syria and Iran. Known for advocating an aggressive US strategy against Iran, he pressed for aggressive moves to cut off Iranian aid to the Syrian regime, declaring: Absent Iran's help, I don't believe [Syrian President Bashar] Assad would have been in power the last six months. It is significant that the sudden cashiering of Giardina and Carey follows the Obama administration's decision to postpone a war with Syria, which it nearly launched last month. More broadly, a decade of escalating US imperialist interventions across the Middle East and Africa has placed rising strains on the US military and its relations with civilian authorities. At the same time, the weight of the US military and security forces in the country's political life has grown immensely, as the White House relied on them to fight wars and promote the hysterical atmosphere of the war on terror. The risk of military rule in the United States was underscored by the unprecedented lockdown of the entire city of Boston by US security forces in April, after the Boston Marathon bombing. In a 2008 article Coming Soon: A Crisis in Civil-Military Relations, University of North Carolina Professor Richard Kohn bluntly wrote: The president elected in November will inherit a
[Biofuel] Monsanto's pesticides poisoning Argentina - report
http://rt.com/news/monsanto-argentina-health-problems-484/ Monsanto's pesticides poisoning Argentina - report Published time: October 21, 2013 Pesticides sold by Monsanto are behind health problems ranging from birth defects to elevated rates of cancer in Argentina, a report has revealed. A lack of regulations has led to widespread misuse of Monsanto's products in the Latin American nation. The Associated Press carried out a report that found a clear link between the use of pesticides sold by Monsanto and growing health problems in Argentina. Absence of regulations and their enforcement has led to widespread misuse of Monsanto's chemicals across the country. In turn, this has caused multiple health problems in the rural population. AP documented a number of occasions when toxic pesticides were used close to populated areas and consequently contaminated the water supply and caused health problems. Santa Fe Province, which is Argentina's number one producer of cereals, forbids the use of pesticides less than 500 meters from populated areas. However, AF uncovered evidence that toxic chemicals were used as little as 30 meters from people's homes. Schoolteacher Andrea Druetta who lives in Santa Fe told AP that her children had been covered in pesticides recently while swimming in the garden pool. In addition, studies show that cancer rates in the province are two to four times higher than the rest of the country, while in the neighboring province of Chaco birth defects have quadrupled since the introduction of biotechnology in the agricultural industry around a decade ago. Researchers also found high rates of thyroid disorders and chronic respiratory illness in Santa Fe. Deadly cocktails Monsanto's chemical pesticide, Roundup, contains a substance called glyphosate. While the substance has been deemed harmless, AP found that it is being used in a number of ways in Argentina that are unanticipated by regulatory science or specifically banned by existing law. Doctor Damian Vernassi from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Rosario told RT's Spanish channel, Actualidad RT, that these chemical mixes could be responsible for the drastic increase in health problems. It could be linked to pesticides, he said. There has been analysis of the primary ingredient, but we have never investigated the interactions between the different chemicals that are being mixed. AP interviewed Argentine farmhand, Fabian Tomassi, who worked preparing a cocktail of chemicals to spray crops for three years. He now suffers from the debilitating neurological disorder, polyneuropathy, and is near death. I prepared millions of liters of poison without any kind of protection, no gloves, masks or special clothing, he said. I didn't know anything. I only learned later what it did to me, after contacting scientists. In response to the study, Monsanto issued a statement saying that it does not condone the misuse of pesticides or the violation of any pesticide law, regulation, or court ruling. Monsanto takes the stewardship of products seriously and we communicate regularly with our customers regarding proper use of our products, said spokesperson Thomas Helscher in a written statement. Argentina was one of the first countries to adopt Monsanto's biotechnology to increase its agricultural output. The multinational's products transformed Argentina into the world's third largest producer of soy. At present Argentina's entire soy crop is genetically modified, as is most of its corn and cotton. In addition, AP found that Argentine farmers use about 4.5 pounds of pesticide concentrate per acre, which is over double the amount used in the US. ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
