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Friday, November 5, 2010
November 05 2010 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Circadian Vs The Industrial - Certain Industrial Manifestations Remain Past Their Time
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." November 05 2010 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Circadian Rhythms Vs The Industrial Age - Certain Industrial Manifestations Remain Past Their Time Of Practical Use[Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [128kbps MP3 12:29 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] |
In The News:
Thanks this morning to ChrisM, my MP3Angel, for supplying the news and commentary audio files.
The launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery for it's 39th and perhaps last mission has been delayed again by a Hydrogen leak. They'll try again in a couple of days.
There has been a new blast in the eight days of volcanic eruptions from Indonesia's Mount Merapi. So far it's only a smoke plume, hot ashes, and gas, but that could change at any time and at least 100 are known dead so far. When Krakatoa, also an Indonesian Volcano, erupted in 1883 it caused a short-period of Ice Age.
The Taliban are apparently attempting to disrupt and/or sway the Afghanistan peace talks with death threats. Meanwhile, a Sufi leader who had been cooperating with the West has been wounded in an assassination attempt.
Also, "Louis Berger Group Inc., a New Jersey-based engineering consulting firm, was charged today with fraud in relation to reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq."
McClatchy notices the company's prosecution was 'deferred' and it "agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars":
One of the government's highest profile American contractors in Afghanistan has agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle allegations that it overbilled the U.S. government.BusinessWeek claims “They manipulated the formula for allocating indirect costs of their work on the invoices they submitted for the reconstruction projects in Afghanistan and Iraq,”
In return, the Justice Department will end its investigation into allegations that Louis Berger was intentionally overcharging American taxpayers, individuals close to the investigation told McClatchy Newspapers on Thursday. The settlement, which could be as high as $65 million, would include civil and criminal penalties...
In Full @ KansasCity.com
But McClatchy goes further, claiming "In some instances the company is accused of shifting overhead costs from private clients to federal and state contracts, where they were less likely to be noticed."
That's fraud...
But U.S. Funded Reconstruction in Afghanistan is a MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR industry and this sort of grifting is just what the empire expects. After all, the people who assign and oversee these contracts and the people who execute(sic) them are almost always industry insiders no matter which side of the contract they're signing, and those sides swap quite often.
Here's an example of America's attempt to not only 'nation-build' a country, Afghanistan, but strategically create a "New Regional Order" in the process:
A key construction project in the volatile south-eastern border region is the Washington-funded K-G Road - a $US100 million ($A114 million), 100-kilometre blacktop through wild Taliban country between Khost, on the Pakistan border, and the hub city of Gardez, south of Kabul.It's not the FIRST time the US has engaged in socio-cultural engineering in Afghanistan... We tried (and failed) in the 1950s. See: “Little America” in Afghanistan: Is the US Repeating a Failed 1950’s Experiment in Social Engineering? at Firedoglake for this little known piece of history about the American Empire.
The road is part of a grand design to break five strategic centres from economic and social dependency on neighbouring Pakistan. By linking them together and to the national ring-road, they might be hooked back into Kabul's orbit.
Overseeing the K-G Road is US engineer Steve Yahn, a 53-year-old Massachusetts father who has been building roads in Afghanistan since 2002 so that he can afford to send his children to college.
He is acutely aware of the challenge ahead... MUCH More @ theage.com.au
The Republicans are carving up the "staffing turkey" in the House... Meanwhile, President Obama leaves for Asia and India with a delegation of U.S. business people. Unlike America, in India, if you acquire a license to sell something, you have to manufacture it there. President Obama will also visit Indonesia and China on this trip. More at Foreign Policy Magazine
Haiti is beginning to feel the front edge of Hurricane Tomas which is threatening the Caribbean from Eastern Cuba to the Bahamas. The 1.3 MILLION people living in the earthquake refugee tent cities on low ground have been ordered to move... to Where?
Here's an available option gleaned from yesterday's synopsis:
(It's also notable there's enough vacant housing in the United States to house EVERY homeless person in the country for this winter. But when it comes to supplying some basic human necessities, the United States of America fails as dramatically as 'the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere')
Haiti... Remember Haiti? Earthquake earlier this year. Countless millions of dollars given to middleman NGOs (The American Red Cross said they were sweeping what they didn't 'need' into their general fund) for relief, and the world was said to have 'sprung into action'. Hurricane Tomas approaches... and despite that international 'effort', the displaced are experiencing an outbreak of Cholera for the first time in half a century, and they are STILL unsheltered, and endangered:
Haiti's Tent Cities to Bear the Worst of Hurricane TomasThat tragedy of a large unsheltered Haitian populations could EASILY exacerbate an epidemiological nightmare already in progress, and growing. Again, despite the 'efforts' of the UN, and countless 'relief' agencies and NGOs.
Wednesday 03 November 2010
by: Stephen Kurczy
The Christian Science Monitor - Report
As tropical storm Tomas speeds toward Haiti, threatening to turn into a hurricane before it passes just west of the island Friday morning, some 1.3 million people are virtually trapped in Port-au-Prince’s flimsy tent cities.
In the countryside, hundreds of thousands more Haitians still live in tents following the 7.0 earthquake the leveled the capital and surrounding areas in January.
Authorities have advised anyone living in makeshift camps to seek refuge in sturdier buildings, but many say they don't have that option.
“The majority of people have nowhere to go,” says Stefan Reynier, the head of mission for Doctors Without Borders in Léogâne, 18 miles west of the capital. “Those people will not be protected.”
This is despite the fact that more than 100,000 homes in Port-au-Prince sit vacant and in need of only minimal repairs since an earthquake rocked the country in January, according to aid organizations in the country. Each home could be repaired with only days worth of work and several thousand dollars in supplies, they say...
In Full @ Christian Science Monitor via TruthOut
"The total number of (Haitian Cholera) cases now stands at 6,742":
Haiti cholera deaths rise sharply
03 November 10 2010
The number of people known to have died from a cholera epidemic in Haiti has increased markedly. Health officials say 105 more people have died since Saturday, bringing the total to 442.They said there had been a 40% jump in the number of new cases.
On Monday, the US Centers for Disease Control found that all the Haitian patients had the same strain of cholera, one that is most commonly found in South Asia. The UN is investigating allegations that excrement from Nepalese peacekeepers caused the epidemic. But Health Minister Dr Alex Larsen said it was unlikely the outbreak's origin would ever be known.
Haiti had not seen a cholera outbreak for about half a century," In Full @ BBC
In OTHER News...
This is winning the "War On Terror"? As the al Qaeda movement (IT IS NOT AN "ORGANIZATION") grows larger due to the West's actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Central Asia, and the Horn of Africa, it gets easier to infiltrate. More at the Washington Post, who don't quite state it like that.
[After the commentary... Joe Jackson is feeling a little pressed for time. Courtesy of the respective artists.]
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