Just when you thought it wasn’t bad enough that bottled water companies drain public reserves of water for free and then sell it back to said public for $1.50 a pop, WaterBank of America has launched a fresh new horror:
Because you didn’t need enough plastic in your life.
H/T to Meagan D.; sorry that I didn’t believe you at first.
So we’ve all heard about the Blackwater thing by now, right? After last Sunday, when Blackwater Christofascist mercenaries went on a killing spree, murdering at least 28 people in cold blood, Iraq’s puppet government finally said “enough is enough,” and revoked Blackwater’s license to operate in the country. This isn’t the first time that Blackwater has done something like this—it’s easy, considering that Blackwater killers are immune from prosecution. They’re only killing Iraqis, after all.
Remember democracy in Iraq, and those teary-eyed American conservatives praising the courage of ordinary men and woman and their purple fingers? Well, turns out that the whole democracy-building adventure was as hollow as we anti-war cynics said it was, because despite the puppet government’s orders, the occupiers have resumed Blackwater convoys. This, despite how deeply horrifying the massacre really was:
Witnesses say the first victims of the shootings were a couple with their child, the mother and infant meeting horrific deaths, their bodies fused together by heat after their car caught fire. The contractors, according to this account, also shot Iraqi soldiers and police and Blackwater then called in an attack helicopter from its private air force which inflicted further casualties.
Pretty par for the course, though, burning parents and babies alive. We’re used to hearing news like that. Here’s a fresh new horror that America is foisting on the long-suffering Iraqi people: Order 81.
Most North Americans, even left-wing, anti-capitalist North Americans, don’t know about the epidemic of debt-related suicides among Indian farmers. You should take some time to learn about it, though—at least 4,500 farmers in central India have killed themselves in the past six years—even higher than the slightly-better-publicized 4,300 Palestinian deaths so far during the Second Intifada. And while neoconservatism has generated righteous anger for its genocidal ideology, the Indian tragedy is a reminder of how brutal neoliberalism has been for the people of the Third World.
So, why are the Indian farmers killing themselves? Because they can’t repay crop loans. Why can’t they repay crop loans? Well, the way farming has worked since the dawn of agriculture is that you have your initial investment, which includes seeds, and you keep reusing your seeds after each harvest. If you don’t have enough, you can trade seeds with your neighbour. But companies like the notorious U.S.-based Monsanto realized that they could make more money manufacturing and pushing genetically modified “terminator seeds,” which are sterile and cannot be reused, forcing farmers into dependence on the company for their livelihood. To make things worse, the genetically modified seeds tend to be hardier than the natural variety, so the sneaky company can just blow some onto an unsuspecting farmer’s field, and presto! The mutant crops overtake the natural crops, and you have a new Monsanto customer-for-life. Nice, huh?
Well, this has worked out so nicely for transnational corporations in India that the Americans have decided to try it in Iraq, because invading, murdering, and looting hasn’t permanently screwed the country enough. When he was administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, U.S. diplomat L. Paul Bremer issued a bunch of orders, including the aforementioned Order 81:
What Order 81 did was to establish the strong intellectual property protections on seed and plant products that a company like the St. Louis-based Monsanto — purveyors of genetically modified (GM) seeds and other patented agricultural goods — requires before they’ll set up shop in a new market like the new Iraq. With these new protections, Iraq was open for business. In short, Order 81 was Bremer’s way of telling Monsanto that the same conditions had been created in Iraq that had led to the company’s stunning successes in India.
Dr. Vandana Shiva, a scientist and activist who has done a tremendous amount to fight against the GM assault on India, explains the colonialist dimensions of terminator seeds thusly:
This epidemic of piracy is very much like the epidemic of piracy which was named colonialism 500 years ago. I think we will soon need to name this round of piracy through patents as recolonialization as a new colonialization which differs from the old only in this – the old colonialization only took over land, the new colonialization is taking over life itself.
While the Blackwater mercenaries will eventually be forced to leave, one way or another, terminator seeds are a great way to ensure that Iraq will remain, long into the foreseeable future, a wretched neo-colony of American corporations.
Global warming is melting Arctic ice and opening the Northwest Passage.
This is one of these stories that should get everyone freaked out, regardless of political affiliation. Of course, there’s a plus side:
Researcher Claes Ragner of Norway’s Fridtjof Nansen Institute, which works on Arctic environmental and political issues, said for now, the new opening has only symbolic meaning for the future of sea transport.
“Routes between Scandinavia and Japan could be almost halved, and a stable and reliable route would mean a lot to certain regions,” he said by phone. But even if the passage is opening up and polar ice continues to melt, it will take years for such routes to be regular, he said.
“It won’t be ice-free all year around and it won’t be a stable route all year,” Ragner said. “The greatest wish for sea transportation is streamlined and stable routes.”
To Ragner’s credit, he goes on to say that the melting of the ice—no matter how much money it brings in—is a Very Bad Thing. But it makes me wonder how many business leaders are watching climate chaos and seeing dollar signs. Conservatives’ denial of global warming is disingenuous—we can see the evidence for ourselves—but I’m sure there are a few ways that climate change can bring about short-term profit for someone.
Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada and the United States are among countries in a race to secure rights to the Arctic that heated up last month when Russia sent two small submarines to plant its national flag under the North Pole. A U.S. study has suggested as much as 25 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden in the area.
Which brings me to a link that’s a year old but worth reading: It’s capitalism or a habitable planet – you can’t have both. Sure, I’m biased in this regard, being no fan of wars, homelessness, sweatshops, and other products of the Great Invisible Hand of the Free Market. But Newman gives a concise environmental analysis of why things gotta change:
Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature. It is predicated on infinitely expanding markets, faster consumption and bigger production in a finite planet. And yet this ideological model remains the central organising principle of our lives, and as long as it continues to be so it will automatically undo (with its invisible hand) every single green initiative anybody cares to come up with.
Much discussion of energy, with never a word about power, leads to the fallacy of a low-impact, green capitalism somehow put at the service of environmentalism. In reality, power concentrates around wealth. Private ownership of trade and industry means that the decisive political force in the world is private power. The corporation will outflank every puny law and regulation that seeks to constrain its profitability. It therefore stands in the way of the functioning democracy needed to tackle climate change. Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it under social control will we be able to overcome the global environmental crisis.
I’ll leave you with Stan Rogers’ beautiful tribute to the “land so wild and savage.” I’ve always thought it was a terribly sad song. I think it’s about to become even sadder.
It’s that day again. The day that wingnuts remind us to NEVER! FORGET! (while conveniently ignoring the plight of uninsured rescue workers still suffering from health effects and those now ineligible for workers’ compensation. But who cares about that when you can wave a little flag?).
Today, also, many of us remember that other thing that happened on September 11th. You know, that time the CIA overthrew the democratically elected president of Chile to install a neoconservative wet dream of a dictator.
Despite Pinochet’s death and the election of a supposedly centre-left president, the ripples of American democracy-building exercises are still hurting Chileans. Few, if any, have been screwed over more than the indigenous Mapuche people. Like all native inhabitants of the Americas, colonization wasn’t kind to them—they were frequently evicted from their communal lands and subject to systemic persecution.
Salvador Allende was one of their few beacons of hope:
In 1972, Law #17.729 of the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende completely restructured the Mapuche land situation. As one Chilean lawyer we met told us, this is the only legislation in the history of Chile which has been favorable to the Mapuche.
I bet you can guess what happened to the Mapuche in 1973:
In September 1973 the Pinochet military regime took power and a widespread and bloody revenge was visited on the Mapuche who had dared to question the injustices of history and retake the lands which had always been theirs.
“… On the day of the coup, the big landowners, the land barons, the military and the carabineros started a great manhunt against the Mapuches who had struggled and gained their land back; … the massacres of Lautaro, Cunco, Meli-Peuco, Nehuente, … Lonquimay … and Panguipulli … The counter-revolution of 1973 hit the Mapuche populations even harder than most other sectors …” (UN Ad Hoc Working Group on the Situation of Human Rights in Chile 1978). “No one has ever been able to accurately establish the number of Mapuches actually killed at /that/ time. Only /in 1979/, after six years, /were/ some people gaining the courage to explain what happened to them and their families” (Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America 1980).
The issue is still land. The Chilean government would like to use Mapuche lands for mining, logging, and the construction of a large hydro-electric dam. The Mapuche, obviously, take issue with this, and face torture, murder, and imprisonment for fighting back. They are especially targeted by counter-terrorism legislation originally introduced by Pinochet, which allows prosecutors to withhold evidence from the defense for up to six months, and to conceal the identity of prosecution witnesses.
Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile, claims that the hundreds of Mapuche political prisoners (including tribal leaders and activists, several of whom regularly go on hunger strikes), are all “common criminals.” Meanwhile, the Mapuche suffer under the brunt of corporate globalization and the War on Terror, 1973-style, their cause ignored by most of the world.
The Mapuche Nation website has more information, and information on how you can help.
World Net Daily asks us environmentalist feminazis: what do you love more, bitch, your precious promiscuity or the planet?
While environmentalists are usually vocal about perceived threats ranging from pesticides to global warming, there is a silence when it comes to one threat already harming the water supply: hormones from birth-control pills.
…George Harden, a board member of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, based in Steubenville, Ohio, says people should not hold their breath for action to be taken.
“If you’re killing mosquitoes to save people from the West Nile virus, you can count on secular environmentalists to lay down in front of the vapor truck, claiming some potential side effect that might result from the spray,” Harden told the Register. “But if birth control deforms fish – backed by the proof of an EPA study – and threatens the drinking supply, mum will be the word.”
Oh, my god, could it be true that every time I urinate, an endangered fish angel gets its wings? To google! Where we find an article featuring the WND scare quote, “It’s “the first thing that I’ve seen as a scientist that really scared me,” university biologist John Woodling told the Denver Post.”
Estrogen mimickers are believed to be caused by chemicals called nonylphenols, found in everything from paints and rubber to cosmetics and plastics. They are considered a possible cause of kidney, eye, liver and reproductive problems.
They’ve been banned in much of Europe and are under review in Canada, but are still common in America, where they are flowing out of sewage plants and into clean water flowing into America’s rivers.
That’s right, every wanton strumpet in America could toss her pills tomorrow and we’d still have an estrogen mimicker problem, because estrogen mimickers are an industrial waste, and -if Europe is any example- a waste that can be eliminated without forcing women to give up their pills. Or, we could solve the problem the WND way: got a social ill? A little cunt-blaming will solve it!
In ThePolitic.com, Shane Edwards writes, “To give this publicity would pit nature against consequence-free sex, and that just won’t happen. But what disturbs me about this even more than the environmental impact (and the reality that this will NEVER be dealt with because of its political ramifications) is what this is doing to us. I mean, if these effects are happening with fish and frogs, what is happening to us?”
Damn those sluts and their fish castrating ways. Feminism: turns your daughters to whores and your fish into girlie whore-fish. And don’t even think about what those chemical plants consumer waste products toothless, unenforced, being-dismantled EPA regulations cunty mchormonebags are doing to your balls, man. It’ll just make your estrogen-softened formerly manly self cry.
Some good news for people who like alternative energy: ethanol is back on the table.
Cellulosic ethanol is ethanol that comes from cellulose instead of sugar. This is good because most plants don’t have a lot of sugar, but all plants have lots of cellulose. So, instead of using food crops, (like corn and sugar cane which have lots of sugar) to create fuel, we can use any crops, like mown grass clippings, fallen tree limbs or corn stalks (instead of corn ears) to create ethanol.
I’ve been working with some cellulose derivatives this summer, and anyone will tell you that while cellulose can be an absolute bitch to work with, once you’ve hammered out the chemistry that leads to the results you want, that shit is dirt cheap and everywhere. Even better news? It doesn’t have that lameass yield that corn does:
Cellulosic ethanol can contain up to 16 times more energy than is required to create it! If that doesn’t sound ridiculously impressive, consider that gasoline contains only 5 times more energy than was required to create it and corn ethanol is totally lame, containing only 1.3 times the energy required to create it.
Five times in my life, Los Angeles and/or its surrounding areas have beckoned. Regardless of whether I was traveling to see friends or catch a UT Rose Bowl victory, I left with the impression that I could — sometimes that I should — live in LA.
Until this last trip.
Don’t get me wrong, LA still offers plenty to love. I’m one of those weird solar-powered people, and its 300+ days of sunshine are deeply appealing. The town is saturated with the latest movies, music, and art. Its suburbs hardly feel suburban thanks to the cool dives and shops on every corner. And, weirdly enough, I’ve never had nicer service across the board in any city.
I’ve learned to accept LA’s expensive nature, too. Even though you have to win the lottery to afford a one-bedroom condo, its rental rates in some places are on the tolerable side of extortion. No meal costs less than $15/person, either, but the quality of the fare usually makes it worth the sacrifice (including the subsequent extra nights of mac and cheese to save up).
On the dark side, flaunting your wealth is a competitive sport in LA. And scary plastic surgery couples infest many of the places I’d otherwise like to hang out. And every friend is 30 minutes away from every other friend, no matter where you move. The city has plenty of warts, but none of them are dealbreakers for me.
The cartoonishly congested roadways have always been close to one, though. There’s nothing like a midnight stand-still on the 101 to make you crazy, and I can only assume that repeated exposure to such absurdity is why 70% of LA’s drivers act like escaped mental patients behind the wheel. Watching a Jag convertible hop the curb to shoot down a sidewalk at 30 miles an hour is one thing. Watching several other drivers think that was a good idea and follow suit is much more alarming.
Obviously, Los Angeles was always hazy when I was there, too, no matter the time of year. And maybe it was always this bad, but it never freaked me out as much on previous trips as it did on this one — especially when you combine it with the aforementioned traffic problems.
Everywhere you go in LA, you’re surrounded by single passenger vehicles and the cloud of smog they helped create. You literally cannot escape it. Having ridden the fine LA buses and subway system, I can confirm that the city does in fact possess mass transportation options. Unfortunately, its sprawling layout and the all-directions nature of its traffic make it nearly impossible for those options to serve LA’s millions of commuters effectively.
Late 90′s electric car fuck-ups aside, California’s trying to solve the problem. Along with implementing its stricter emissions standards, the state sued automakers for global warming negligence. Those things are nice, but how they’ll make a dent in the air’s smoggy armor remains a bit of a mystery to me.
Being surrounded by the bad air and fleet of nearly empty cars was suffocating this time around. They served as constant reminders of our destructive me-first culture, and any time I participated in traffic, I felt trapped. I’m terrified of what global warming will do to our planet and its inhabitants, and if I was forced to live in LA, I would never be able to hide from those fears. Ever.
Of course, LA’s air will look the same whether I’m there or not. The US and most of its citizens will continue their consumptive gluttony regardless of how many reminders confront me. Really, what was I so afraid of in LA, other than being reminded of many times I contributed to the problem instead of helping to solve it? If I’m being honest, then, wasn’t the scariest aspect of being in Los Angeles actually my inability to hide from my own wasteful ways as easily as I can now?
I think it was. And that has nothing to do with LA at all.
Have you noticed all those terrible storms that we’ve started to encounter as a result of warmer oceans? And all those rising sea levels that threaten the existence of major cities around the globe? And just how generally fucked we all may be as a result of global warming?
Well, law firms have, too. They’re expecting that as more lives are ruined the way they were ruined in New Orleans, and as more information comes out pointing to Big Energy’s full awareness of the dangers presented by their CO2 emissions, there’ll be some beaucoup-bucks lawsuitin’ ahead.
Top Dallas firm Thompson & Knight started a dedicated climate-change practice June 4 with 26 lawyers. Monday, Dallas’ Vinson & Elkins will unveil its 41-lawyer group, headed by a former senior counsel for the World Bank.
The law firms – and a dozen others nationwide – are getting ready for a predicted explosion of climate-related work tied to government regulation, lawsuits against energy companies and new markets that will trade the rights to emit carbon.
As friend and reader Sigmund pointed out to me, the trail of money is the best barometer for reality in America. And along with the formation earlier this year of The United States Climate Action Partnership, which includes companies like DuPont, GE, BP, and others banding together to request emissions regulations, the creation of massive legal departments concentrating solely on climate change litigation and regulation should send a loud and clear signal to the last few remaining holdouts (like, say, the head of NASA) that global warming is real and impacting our lives in significant ways.
So the next time Grandpa tells you that global warming crap is crap, just wait for him to fart and then hit him with a class-action lawsuit. You, your mom, and your Uncle Albert have suffered enough of his harmful CO2 emissions, and Thompson & Knight and Vincent & Elkins are here to help. Just make sure you enlist their help before Grandpa does, though, because these firms are more than happy to play both sides:
By their geography, the Dallas firms have a number of energy companies as clients. But they also expect to represent plaintiffs who’ve been harmed by global warming and pollution.
Mmmm. Them’s good fees! They’ll spend nicely when Thompson’s or Elkins’ descendants are purchasing black market water credits in the Iowa desert.
[And, no, I'm not opposed to suing the pants off any companies at fault, but it also might be a little late for it to help much...]
When the planet melts and/or we otherwise manage to destroy ourselves, do not dispair. Instead, look to the future-look the Arctic.
The Svalbard International Seed Vault will be built into a mountainside on a remote island near the North Pole.
The vault aims to safeguard the world’s agriculture from future catastrophes, such as nuclear war, asteroid strikes and climate change.
It’s like Noah’s ark, but with plants instead of animals and it is very specifically designed to not float.
The Norwiegians are paying for it, so if I were you I’d stay on their good side. And if I may say, flatteringly but not obnoxiously so, they’ve really done a bang up job of planning against every horrible thing we could possibly do to shoot ourselves in the face agriculturally:
“We looked very far into the future. We looked at radiation levels inside the mountain, and we looked at the area’s geological structure,” he told BBC News.
“We also modelled climate change in a drastic form 200 years into future, which included the melting of ice sheets at the North and South Poles, and Greenland, to make sure that this site was above the resulting water level.”
By building the vault deep inside the mountain, the surrounding permafrost would continue to provide natural refrigeration if the mechanical system failed, explained Dr Fowler.
If you ever need to make one single convincing argument against intelligent design, just point to Chris Muir. This willfully ignorant shitbag spews aggravating, blatant falsehoods as obvious facts, and not just on any old topic. Muir chooses to further lies that threaten the fate of the planet, presumably because they happen to come from the other political camp. “Petty” doesn’t even begin to describe his brand of self-destruction. That humans could evolve over millions of years and STILL produce a product as broken as Chris Muir pretty much disproves intelligent design on its face.
Global warming is very real, and very dangerous. Every credible scientific study ever performed backs this up.
It’s gotten so serious that major corporations want government action on the issue:
Chief executives of 10 major corporations urged Congress on Monday to require limits on greenhouse gases this year, contending voluntary efforts to combat climate change are inadequate.
These companies banded together to form the United States Climate Action Partnership, and their membership includes GE, BP America, DuPont, Alcoa, Duke Energy, and more. They are some of the biggest, least friendly companies in the world, and even they are demanding the feds make them reduce emissions.
Think about that for a moment.
Most warmnut arguments against government intervention rest on the assumption that it would harm the economy. But not even corporate America believes that anymore:
At a news conference, the executives said that mandatory reductions of heat-trapping emissions can be imposed without economic harm and would lead to economic opportunities if done across the economy and with provisions to mitigate costs.Many of the companies already have voluntarily moved to curb greenhouse emissions, they said. But the executives also said they do not believe voluntary efforts will suffice.
“It must be mandatory, so there is no doubt about our actions,” said Jim Rogers, chairman of Duke Energy. “The science of global warming is clear. We know enough to act now. We must act now.”
We agree to participate in a governed society because we all believe that external enforcement of an agreed-upon set of common restrictions — no murder, no stealing, no rape, etc. — improves our overall quality of life, and, arguably, our freedom. All these companies (and you, and me, and any other sane person) want is to extend this logic to some basic environmental protection.
Left to our own devices, we’re almost always going to make the short-sighted, selfish choice. That’s why we make laws, to force us to do the right thing even when we might not want to in any given moment. Right now, companies have no incentive to reduce emissions significantly on their own. But they recognize that if you make everyone do it, then no one gets ahead by cheating the environment.
So that’s it. That’s the end of even the most remote bullshit crackpot theory from the Right on the matter. The leaders of their precious free market want to save the planet. I think it’s about time they get in line.
When the northern fringes of your country start to break up and drift away, even if they were just ice shelves, I think it is safe to say that you are doomed.
A giant ice shelf has snapped free from an island south of the North Pole, scientists said Thursday, citing climate change as a “major” reason for the event…
The ice shelf was one of six major shelves remaining in Canada’s Arctic. They are packed with ancient ice that is more than 3,000 years old. They float on the sea but are connected to land.
The good news is that this isn’t some pissant island full of people who should have known better than to not live in America or the EU. This is a floating piece of ice the size of Manhattan which may decide to drift south and fuck with commercial interests:
Within days of breaking free, the Ayles Ice Shelf drifted about 30 miles offshore before freezing into the sea ice. A spring thaw may bring another concern: that warm temperatures will release the new ice island from its Arctic grip, making it an enormous hazard for ships.
“Over the next few years this ice island could drift into populated shipping routes,” Weir said.
Which is probably a good thing, since we’re not going to see action on climate change where it matters, in the corporations and by extension the freakin’ government, until the apacolypse starts cutting into their business plan.
GM’s taking steps (albeit baby ones since we know they’ve already developed and quashed a successful electric car) to be more competitive in the environmentally sound market:
General Motors Corp. will introduce new hybrid gasoline-electric autos next year to take sales from Toyota Motor Corp., the leader in the fuel-saving technology.
GM plans three hybrid-electric versions of its Saturn Vue sport-utility vehicle, including one that plugs into an outlet, as part of a new focus on “electrically driven” autos, GM Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner said in a speech today. Plug-in hybrids recharge when the vehicle isn’t in use and switch to gasoline when the batteries are drained.
But they don’t have to like it:
Nov. 29, 2006 — The chairman and CEO of General Motors today gave a shove to a protester at the Los Angeles Auto Show who asked for a pledge to make GM the leader in fuel economy by 2010.
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