Wednesday, March 19, 2008

UK Top Cop Who Led CIA Probe Found Dead
Reward for Information on Cartels
France to Renegotiate Military Accords with Africa: Sarkozy

"The French leader was accompanied on his trip by the chairman of French nuclear giant Areva, bidding for a nuclear reactor contract as South Africa struggles to cope with a massive energy shortfall...

Earlier, French power giant Alstom announced a 1.36 billion euro (two-billion-dollar) contract for the construction of a coal-fuelled power plant in the central Mpumalanga province."

The True Cost of War
U.S. Healthcare Gets Boost From Charity
Journalists Suffer WTC Health Effects
The various constituencies suffering health effects from 9/11 are falling into familiar categories. First, of course, were the Ground Zero workers. One of the many lawsuits currently in progress includes four hundred who have already been diagnosed with cancer.

Then came the cleanup workers of buildings in the neighborhood and the residents, office workers and students who were induced or coerced to return to the area while the fires still burned and smoldered. (Contrary to common assumption, contamination is not necessarily reduced when temperatures go down. In fact, it is during smoldering fires that dioxins, which are among the most toxic substances ever created, are released.)

Later, the rescue dogs began falling ill and dying prematurely although one official study purports to show otherwise.

Now come the journalists, a development which has not yet received the media attention you might expect. Perhaps the ones who have manifested symptoms aren't sufficiently reknowned. Or perhaps their bosses are keeping a lid on this new angle.

The powers that be have pitted the various constituencies against each other, funding healthcare for one at the expense of another. So far these tactics have not worked; the separate constituences have fought together for the rights of all. Jenna Orkin

Guantanamo Wind Farm
James Lovelock's Latest
Modular Ecological Design
Judge Orders USDA to Pay Farmer for Sludge-Poisoned Land
Debunking of "No Moon Landing" Nonsense
Chavez-FARC Connection a Fake
More on Philip Agee

5 comments:

Rice Farmer said...

Lovelock is of course right about renewables. They can't prop up what petroleum has built.

But I'm disappointed to see that he thinks nuclear is different. Even if there were no problem with the waste, nuclear is dependent on fossil fuels just as much as renewables are.

Uranium in its natural state is in fact so high in entropy that it's useless as fuel. It can't start or sustain a nuclear reaction. That's why much fossil fuel energy has to be expended in processing the ore and enriching the uranium. Then comes nuclear plant construction and everything else, finally to the colossal energy expenditure needed to manage the waste for 20,000 years.

In reality, renewables and nuclear are heavily dependent on the "entropy subsidy" provided by fossil fuels. Without that boost, it is impossible to exploit such high-entropy, low-density energy sources in appreciable quantities.

Long after what's left of humanity has returned to a pre-modern lifestyle, we will be looking at the wreckage of renewables and at nuclear waste. The former I can live with (at least it can be salvaged for other purposes), but the latter is going to be ruining the planet for a long time to come. And all for what?

Lawrence Peterson said...

The Guardian continues to report the truth about the horror in Iraq, This article, from March 19th, shows that the death toll from the US invasion is higher than the total estimated death toll during Saddam's reign.

To see this story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/19/iraq

Pandabonium said...

Guantanamo Wind Farm? - I feel like I'm living the movie "Brazil". Green torture? - Just shoot me.

Jenna Orkin said...

pandabonium

check out

www.oilempire.us/brazil.html

Pandabonium said...

Thanks. Good article. I'll refer others to it. That film was absolutely brilliant and eerily spot on in presenting the world we now find ourselves living in (a quarter of a century later). Some of the people I have recommended it to can't take it. They tell me it makes them "too uncomfortable" (hits too close to home I say).

We're all in it together.