Category Archives: U.S.

Fukushima, U.S.

GE getting involved in Fukushima

Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric, met with Tokyo Electric chairman Katsumata Tsunehisa on Sunday.

TEPCo officials said GE’s Immelt offered ‘maximum’ support for dealing with the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which GE designed.

According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, there are 23 nuclear plants in the United States that are similar in design as Fukushima Daiichi.

Immelt will meet with the Japanese Economy Minister on Monday.  Under Japanese regulations, if the design of the plant is proven faulty then GE can be sued.

Immelt has also been pushing for taxpayer supported nuclear plant development in the U.S.  The Guardian newspaper recently reminded people that Immelt once said that investors are not willing to take on the risks of nuclear power, and that those risks should be handled by the government (taxpayers).  In other words, capitalist investors know nuclear power is a bad bet.

According to former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, General Electric paid no U.S. taxes in 2010. He also wants Jeffery Immelt to resign from President Barack Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

 

International, U.S.

3 day search ended, only 78 bodies found

After three days of intense searching by about 20,000 U.S. and Japanese military personnel, only 78 bodies were found.

It was hoped the low tide would reveal more of the missing.

At this point, Japanese national police say there is more than 15,000 people missing. And that is based on reports from living relatives. Police say that the actual number is much higher, because entire families were washed away in the March 11 tsunami, leaving no one to report them missing. Also, documentation of residents in the hardest hit prefectures, were also washed away.

The death toll, so far, going by numbers presented at the prefectural level, is more than 10,000. Again, that is expected to go up as bodies are found.

International, U.S.

Mexican Drug War front for War on Human Rights Activists

According to Human Rights groups, and the United Nations, thousands of people in Mexico have been disappeared since the Drug War began, and the Mexican government is one of the suspects.

Those people being disappeared are not drug dealers, or drug runners, but human rights activists, oil workers, journalists and even migrant workers.  The traditional ‘right’ leaning Mexican government has always viewed human rights activists as left wing commies, and more of a threat than illegal drug dealers.

To put the current situation in perspective, Mexico’s own National Commission on Human Rights, documented the disappearance of 532 people (disappeared by the government) thought to be rights activist in the 1960s-1970s (during the Cold War).  Since 2006 more than 3,000 people have been disappeared.

In 2006, right wing President Felipe Calderón, went on the war path, officially against the drug lords. Is it a coincidence that the Mexican government’s so called war on drugs is actually killing and disappearing civilians?

The facts are that since the Mexican Drugs War began, the people being targeted are civilians, including U.S. citizens.  Far more civilians have been killed than drug dealers. Keep in mind these killings are not from aerial bombing, but from shootings and beatings, and other means, by police, soldiers and drug gangs.  That means the killers had to specifically target the victims.

To put it in perspective: In all of Afghanistan, in 2010, there were 2,421 civilian deaths (Congressional Research Service). In just one Mexican city, Ciudad Juarez, there were 3,111 civilian deaths. That’s one Mexican city compared to all of Afghanistan.

Total deaths in the Drugs War, according to Mexico’s Federal Attorney General’s office, just for 2010, is 12,456 people by the end of November.  And that does not count people disappeared.

In the city of Saltillo, there are 118 documented cases of disappearances since 2007.  The government security forces are believed to be involved in at least 25 of those.  Human Rights Watch documented 12 cases of disappearances in the state of Nuevo León, in which government military personnel and police are believed to be involved.

Hypocritically the Mexican government signed the UN International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, in 2008.  To be fair, not all disappearances are linked to the Mexican government, but it sure is strange that there should be skyrocketing numbers of civilian killed and disappeared, since the Drugs War started in 2006.  Are both the Mexican military and police, and the drug gangs, that bad at finding their targets?

International, U.S.

Libyan Rebels say they Already are being trained by the United States

Al Jazeera says rebels told them they are being trained at a secret base in eastern Libya (by the way that’s where most of the oil fields are).

The al Jazeera reporter stated that the rebels where being trained how to use weapons: “He said these were state-of-the-art, heat-seeking rockets and that they needed to be trained on how to use them, which was one of the things the American and Egyptian special forces were there to do.”-correspondent Laurence Lee

The reporter went on to question calls for arming and training the rebels by coalition forces, “…when in fact they [rebels] are already being armed covertly.”

According to the report, the Libyan rebels say they are getting training and equipment from Egypt and the United States. This is not the first time the rebels have made such claims. 

International, U.S.

More Proof we’re NOT protecting civilians, not even the REBELS, in Libya. Obama either a Fool or a bold faced lier

UN Security Council Resolution 1973, supposedly is about protecting Libyan civilians, yet there are many claims that civilians have been attacked by the UN mandated NATO led coalition forces. Even the Christian Vatican says civilians are being bombed.

Now the Libyan rebels say coalition aircraft have bombed them!

Rebels are reporting several different attacks on their forces, by NATO. In one attack a convoy of vehicles were bombed, in another rebel positions in an oil town was bombed. At least 13 rebels were killed.

NATO says they’re investigating, and implied that the rebels shot at their aircraft first.

This is so messed up. President Barack Obama insists this is about protecting civilians, which has proven false, or impossible to do. Obama has stated, even before the UN resolution, that he wanted Gaddafi out, so far that’s a failure. Obama said the U.S. would be out in a mater of “…days, not weeks!”, it took at least a week and a half to “officially” turn Operation Odyssey Dawn over to NATO (by the way the U.S. still controls NATO, so did we really give up control?).

I have presented many examples, in other postings, that this is all about oil for Europe, not promoting democracy. It’s so clear that the UN mandated coalition forces have no clear goal.  How could the Commander in Chief of U.S. forces (that’s Obama for those who don’t know) rush into such a tar pit?  Obama is either a fool, or a bold faced lier. (Given his INEXPERIENCE, I think he just a fool)

 

 

International, Opinion, U.S.

Obama willing to sell out U.S. troops to South Korean Command, sign of declining U.S. Empire

In an unprecedented move, the United States has agreed, in principal, to put U.S. forces under the direct command of South Korea. Details are still being worked out.

“It is an unprecedented measure since the U.S. military is characteristically reluctant to place troops under the command of other countries.”–The Chosun Ilbo, Korean newspaper

Officially the move is to help South Korea in case of attack by North Korea. But isn’t that why our troops are there to begin with? Why do they have to be placed under direct control of the South Koreans?  Never in United States history has another country controlled our military forces! Even the Russians didn’t do that after the fall of the Soviet Union.  Is it another sign of the decline of the U.S. Empire?

 

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

G20 meeting focusing on letting China in, kicking U.S. out

The current G20 meeting, in China, is discussing many issues, including the disasters in Japan. But, what seems to be the focus is how to bring China into the SDR, and, China’s desire to remove the U.S. dollar as the international reserve currency.

The G20 is made up of bankers and finance officials from 19 countries, and the European Union.  Their objective is to come up with finance and banking systems for a global economy.

Because of China’s growing economic strength, the G20 would like to have the Chinese yuan brought into the SDR.  That is the Special Drawing Rights fund, which is currently as close as you can get to an international money.  It is meant to make huge international transactions easier for members. The SDR replaced gold and silver as standards for international trade in 1969.

China is worried about continued reliance on the U.S. dollar as THE reserve currency for international trade.  Many Chinese economist, and other economist around the world, believe the U.S. dollar’s value is overrated, and is unstable.  They call the use of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency a “dollar trap”.

“Nations around the world have no way of restricting dollar issuance by the Federal Reserve. The current international monetary system lacks both stability and fairness.”- Xu Hongcai, deputy director at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges

Basically China wants a new international reserve currency, no more U.S. dollar.  This will play into the hands of those who want a true international form of money.

International, U.S.

Vatican says coalition is bombing Libyan Civilians

“The so-called humanitarian raids have killed dozens of civilian victims in some neighborhoods of Tripoli.”-Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, the Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli

The Catholic official also said hospitals had been hit by coalition bombing.  President Obama had stated many times that the bombing was to PROTECT civilians.

The Catholic report is in the current issue of Fides, the Catholic missionary newspaper.