By Rupert Cornwell, independent.co.uk — 6 August 2010
And though only a quarter of the 4.9m barrels reckoned to have leaked is still unaccounted, that represents the equivalent of five Exxon Valdez, the tanker whose spill caused an environmental catastrophe in Alaska in 1989.
“There are still boats out there every day working, finding turtles with oil on them and seeing grass lines with oil in it,” charter boat captain Randy Boggs, of Orange Beach in Alabama, told the Associated Press. “All the oil isn’t accounted for. There are millions of pounds of tar balls and oil on the bottom.”
Turns out, This — TIMES 5 —
IS mostly STILL There! … lurking somewhere, just below the surface …
By Rupert Cornwell, independent.co.uk — 6 August 2010
And though only a quarter of the 4.9m barrels reckoned to have leaked is still unaccounted, that represents the equivalent of five Exxon Valdez, the tanker whose spill caused an environmental catastrophe in Alaska in 1989.
“There are still boats out there every day working, finding turtles with oil on them and seeing grass lines with oil in it,” charter boat captain Randy Boggs, of Orange Beach in Alabama, told the Associated Press. “All the oil isn’t accounted for. There are millions of pounds of tar balls and oil on the bottom.”
Turns out, This — TIMES 5 —
IS mostly STILL There! … lurking somewhere, just below the surface …
I am seeing the socialism = Soviet Union meme, in various guises, over at Orange. I suppose that we are to imagine “socialism” as a meme spouted by right-wing zealots who think that Obama is a socialist, a meme that even Ron Paul had the sense to rebut. And then you had this generous diary by Meteor Blades more than a year ago, suggesting a diversity of “socialist” visions. MB’s concluding line:
No matter what The New York Times, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and many progressives think, socialism isn’t a dirty word. Nor an obsolete one.
This diary will attempt to address the meme head-on in an attempt to reclaim the word “socialism” from right-wing elitists.
I can think of no better way to emphasize the current theft of our nations treasury at the expense of its youth than to use the words of Major General Smedley Butler in November 1935.
We are not suppose to win, we are not suppose to lose …. We have always been at war with East Asia. This post is going to largely stand on its own from the research I have turned up.
WASHINGTON, Nov 2, 2009 (Reuters) – The U.S. government does not know exactly how many contractors it employs in Afghanistan, a U.S. commission said on Monday, raising basic questions about oversight of wartime operations.
Contractors in Afghanistan outnumber U.S. troops there and scandals involving misconduct by employees of private firms on the U.S. payroll in Afghanistan and Iraq have prompted calls by Congress for greater accountability.
[..]A traditional manual count by the U.S. military’s Central Command turned up nearly 74,000 U.S. Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan as of June 30 — more than twice the number shown in another survey by the Pentagon.
[..]The Department of Defense has more contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than it has uniformed military personnel, another newly updated report from the Congressional Research Service reminds us.
“The Department of Defense increasingly relies upon contractors to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has resulted in a DOD workforce that has 19% more contractor personnel (207,600) than uniformed personnel (175,000),” said the CRS report
At 57% of total Defense Department workforce, the number of contractors represents “the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by DOD in any conflict in the history of the United States,” the study concludes.
Currently in Afghanistan, there are 121,000 U.S. contractors and 68,000 U.S. troops. As a result of the coming surge, another 30,000 troops and 56,000 contractors are expected. But U.S. lawmakers are afraid that the mistakes that plagued military contracting in Iraq will be repeated in Afghanistan. Will the shadow armies be required to protect the Afghan civilian population? What are the chances that military contractors could cause major damage to America’s mission in Afghanistan? Will the Obama administration be able to prevent the waste, fraud and abuse seen in Iraq?
[..]Recently the CIA announced that it had stopped using Blackwater (now known as Xe Services) to conduct raids and other special operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but some press reports say Xe Services are still at the center of a secret program in Karachi, Pakistan, where they plan assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda members, among other operations.
(Reuters) – Shares in BP hit two-month highs on Thursday on hopes the group would soon permanently seal its Gulf of Mexico oil well and after President Obama said the battle to contain the leak was nearly over.
BP shares were up 2 percent at 430 pence at 5:44 a.m. ET, having earlier hit 434.5 pence, a level last seen in early June, on day 108 of an environmental disaster that has ravaged communities and ecosystems along the Gulf coast, killed sea creatures and coastal birds and cost Chief Executive Tony Hayward his job.
After several setbacks in efforts to plug the deep-sea well, which was damaged by an explosion at a rig on April 20, BP said on Wednesday that heavy drilling mud injected into it the previous day was stemming the flow of crude.
1. The process by which in a closed system, one group of humans will drain all the power and assets unto themselves, leaving the majority of people destitute and utterly void of self-determination.
2. The system pertaining to a class of ruling elites who have removed all true freedom from its conquered people, while maintaining an illusion of said freedoms.
3. The inverted pyramid model by which all empires fail.
*Disclaimer: Yes, I toyed with the idea of using the pronoun “In” rather than “Un” but inequality suggested a more random bias, while unequality an intentional one. Sue me. I reserve the right to be the last word on my made-up words.
So. Prop 8 was overturned. In a totally unrelated story, a leading feminist blames feminism for messing up the kids.
I have to look around, and ask, “Bigger picture, anyone? ANYONE?”
Gareth Porter is an historian and investigative journalist and US foreign and military policy analyst. He writes regularly for Inter Press Service on US policy towards Iraq and Iran. Porter is author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.
Porter talks with Real News Network’s Paul Jay with a dissection of Obama’s Iraq ‘withdrawal’ smoke and mirrors kabuki.
There have been 4,733 coalition deaths — 4,414 Americans, 2 Australians, 1 Azerbaijani, 179 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, 1 Czech, 7 Danes, 2 Dutch, 2 Estonians, 1 Fijian, 5 Georgians, 1 Hungarian, 33 Italians, 1 Kazakh, 1 South Korean, 3 Latvian, 22 Poles, 3 Romanians, 5 Salvadoran, 4 Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, 2 Thai and 18 Ukrainians — in the war in Iraq as of August 4 2010, according to a CNN count. { Graphical breakdown of casualties }. At least 31,897 {31,860 last month} U.S. troops have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon. View casualties in the war in Afghanistan
Iraq, Rapidly becoming the Forgotten War!!
