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The Booming Global Arms Trade Is Creating a New Cold War

by 7wxhk83 Posted on May 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Did Washington just give Israel the green light for a future attack on Iran via an arms deal? Did Russia just signal its further support for Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime via an arms deal? Are the Russians, the Chinese, and the Americans all heightening regional tensions in Asia via arms deals? Is it possible that we’re witnessing the beginnings of a new Cold War in two key regions of the planet—and that the harbingers of this unnerving development are arms deals?

International weapons sales have proved to be a thriving global business in economically tough times. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), such sales reached an impressive $85 billion in 2011, nearly double the figure for 2010. This surge in military spending reflected efforts by major Middle Eastern powers to bolster their armories with modern jets, tanks, and missiles—a process constantly encouraged by the leading arms manufacturing countries (especially the US and Russia) as it helps keep domestic production lines humming. However, this familiar if always troubling pattern may soon be overshadowed by a more ominous development in the global arms trade: the revival of far more targeted Cold War-style weapons sales aimed at undermining rivals and destabilizing regional power balances. The result, inevitably, will be a more precarious world.

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The Booming Global Arms Trade Is Creating a New Cold War

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Is the US About to Become One Big Factory Farm for China?

by KetaHeadraf Posted on May 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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The small number of companies that dominate global meat production is about to get smaller. The Chinese corporation Shuanghui International, already the majority shareholder of China’s largest meat producer, has just bought US giant Smthfield, the globe’s largest hog producer and pork packer, in a $4.7 billion cash deal. (It still has to get past Smithfield’s shareholders and the US Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment, which reviews takeovers of US companies.)

Now, I hope this merger of titans doesn’t provoke a xenophobic reaction. Shuanghui has strong ties to China’s central government, but it also counts Goldman Sachs among its major shareholders. And the US meat industry is already quite globalized. Back in 2009, a Brazilian giant called JBS had already barreled into the US market, and now holds huge positions in beef, pork, and chicken processing here. And true, as China has ramped up its food production—and rapidly reshaped hog production on the industrial US model—it has produced more than it share of food safety scandals, including recent ones involving hogs.

But as I have pointed out, the US pork industry is no prize either—it pollutes water as a matter of course, hollows out the rural areas on which it alights, relies heavily on routine antibiotic use, recently inspired a government watchdog group to lament “egregious” violations of food safety and animal welfare code in slaughterhouses, and uh, has an explosive manure foam problem.

So forget about where HQ is for the vast conglomerate that ultimately profits from running Smithfield’s factory-scale hog farms and slaughterhouses. The real question is: What does this deal telling us about the global food system and the future of food? Reuters offers a hint:

The thrust of the deal is to send the U.S. made pork to China, a factor that one person familiar with the matter said would help during Shuanghui’s CFIUS Committee on Foreign Investment review.

If Reuters is right that deal’s purpose is to grease the wheels of trade carrying US hogs to China and its enormous domestic pork market, then we’re looking at the further expansion of factory-scale swine farming here in the US: all of the festering troubles I listed above, intensified. For Smithfield itself, the deal is savvy, because Americans are eating less meat. In order to maintain endless profit growth, the company needs to conquer markets where per capita meat consumption is growing fast, and the China market itself represents the globe’s biggest prize in that regard.

As for China, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy showed in a blockbuster 2011 report, the central government strived for years for self-sufficiency in pork, even as demand for it exploded, by rapidly industrializing production along the model pioneered by Smithfield. By essentially buying Smithfield, the government may be throwing in the towel—saying, essentially, let’s just offshore our hog production, or at least a huge part of it, to the US.

In an ironic twist, China appears to be taking advantage of lax environmental and labor standards in the US to supply its citizens with something it can’t get enough of. Industrial pork: the iPhone’s culinary mirror image.

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Is the US About to Become One Big Factory Farm for China?

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U.S. trees burned in British coal plants count as renewable energy. WTF?

by AntonioRe Posted on May 29, 2013

U.S. trees burned in British coal plants count as renewable energy. WTF?

By John Upton

ShutterstockiPhone chargers in waiting.

Follow this if you can: Wood from U.S. trees is being shipped over to the U.K., where coal power plants burn it, producing more greenhouse gas emissions than when those same plants generate an equivalent amount of electricity by burning coal.

The weirdest part? This doubly destructive practice is being subsidized in the U.K. to help the country meet its renewable energy targets. WTF?

The BBC explains that when pine trees are grown in America, the best trunks are cut up for wood planks and sold as timber. Much of the rest of the wood is either used for wood pulp or gets chopped up to be used as fuel. Because the wood chips are considered a renewable energy source by the British government, great piles are being shipped over to England to be burned.

“It is the massive scale of this operation that so alarms environmentalists,” BBC environment reporter Roger Harrabin said in a segment aired Tuesday. “Environmentalists say it is madness to be growing trees in the U.S.A. to be keeping the lights on in Britain. But this industy is helping the U.K. meet its targets on renewable energy.”

From a recent article in Power Engineering International:

In November 2012, the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace called on the UK government to cancel plans to subsidise the burning of trees in coal power stations. The RSPB report ‘Dirtier Than Coal?’ says that generating power from typical conifer trees results in 49 per cent more emissions than burning coal, and calls on the government to withdraw public subsidy for generating from feedstock derived from tree trunks.

Biomass generation is booming on the back of climate change legislation and incentives. …

These differ from country to country. As the sector becomes better developed, sophisticated distinctions may have to be built in to encourage the use of biomass that is environmentally and economically sustainable with an acceptable carbon payback period.

In May 2010 the US Environmental Protection Agency decided to include greenhouse gas emissions from biomass energy in its greenhouse gas permit programme. This would treat CO2 emissions from biomass generation and fossil fuels equally. But successful lobbying by the forestry industry led the EPA to defer implementation for three years while it considers how biomass emissions should be determined.

Burning trees for electricity certainly gives new meaning to the term “green energy” – insomuch as it isn’t green at all. Well, I suppose the trees were once green? I guess they’ve got us there.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who

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blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

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U.S. trees burned in British coal plants count as renewable energy. WTF?

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Food Companies Seeking Ingredients That Aren’t Gene-Altered

by Myrna Posted on May 26, 2013

Consumers are driving a movement toward labeling food products made from genetically modified organisms, and food producers are responding. Continued here:  Food Companies Seeking Ingredients That Aren’t Gene-Altered ; ;Related ArticlesTurbine Plans Unnerve Fans of Condors in CaliforniaJapanese Lab Workers Exposed to RadiationWorld Briefing | Asia: India: Power Failures Set Off Protests ;

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Food Companies Seeking Ingredients That Aren’t Gene-Altered

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The Canary Islands Government Allowed "Fast & Furious 6" To Destroy Their Highway With a Tank

by Bart Gibson Posted on May 24, 2013

Mother Jones

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Fast & Furious 6
Universal Pictures
130 minutes

Hands down, Fast & Furious 6 is by far the best movie ever made to feature Ludacris and Tyrese trapped in a Jeep dangling inches off the ground from an imperiled cargo plane.

And there is so, so much more to cherish about the film.

The Fast & Furious franchise has become genuinely fascinating over the last couple of years. One of the most fascinating things about the series is the addition of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the ultra-brawny Diplomatic Security Service agent Luke Hobbs, a character who seemingly cannot go ten minutes without torturing somebody for information. Another fascinating thing is that after a long stretch of churning out barely passable B-movies, the series somehow managed to produce critically acclaimed entertainment, starting with 2011’s Fast Five. (The sixth film has received similarly high marks.) Credit for the newfound critic-and-crowd-pleasing goes to Taiwanese-born American filmmaker Justin Lin, who initially demonstrated the full extent of his directorial talents with the stereotype-subverting independent film Better Luck Tomorrow in 2002.

But the single most fascinating thing about the series so far is the enormous tank in Fast & Furious 6. The tank is arguably the main character in the movie.

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The Canary Islands Government Allowed "Fast & Furious 6" To Destroy Their Highway With a Tank

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Thousands engage in Morocco, the beach is not a garbage can

by Myrna Posted on May 23, 2013

Locals gather in Morocco and clean 4 tons of garbage from a beach. Read this article:   Thousands engage in Morocco, the beach is not a garbage can ; ;Related ArticlesSurfrider’s Beach ManifestoSurfrider Argentina picks up momentumNearly half the rice sold in Guangzhou (pop. 12+ million) is contaminated by cadmium ;

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Thousands engage in Morocco, the beach is not a garbage can

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Dot Chat: From Energy Campaigner to Solar Finance Entrepreneur

by Abby Bath Posted on May 23, 2013

green4us

Warhammer: Cvil War – Games Workshop

Throughout the Warhammer world, war rages eternal. Yet the most deadly and bitter conflicts are not wars of conquest against exotic foes, but the clash of brother versus brother! This Warhammer supplement contains inspirational and evocative background about some of the Warhammer world’s most bloody civil wars. In addition, there are full rules for pla […]

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Inside of a Dog – Alexandra Horowitz

The bestselling book that asks what dogs know and how they think, now in paperback. The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draw […]

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World of Warcraft: Dawn of the Aspects: Part IV – Richard A. Knaak

A Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader. […]

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Cesar Millan’s Short Guide to a Happy Dog – Cesar Millan

After more than 9 seasons as TV’s Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan has a new mission: to use his unique insights about dog psychology to create stronger, happier relationships between humans and their canine companions. Both inspirational and practical, A Short Guide to a Happy Dog draws on thousands of training encounter […]

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Battle Missions: Death Worlds – Games Workshop

The Emperor’s realm encompasses a million worlds, each with its own potential dangers. Yet certain of these planets are so deadly that they are classified as death worlds. From man-eating flora and fauna to deadly poisonous atmospheres and many stranger things besides, on a death world it’s not just the enemy that your warriors have to worry about! Thi […]

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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, says, “Yes, […]

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Trident K9 Warriors – Michael Ritland & Gary Brozek

As Seen on “60 Minutes”! As a Navy SEAL during a combat deployment in Iraq, Mike Ritland saw a military working dog in action and instantly knew he’d found his true calling. Ritland started his own company training and supplying dogs for the SEAL teams, U.S. Government, and Department of Defense. He knew that fewer than 1 percent of […]

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World of Warcraft: Dawn of the Aspects: Part III – Richard A. Knaak

A Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader. […]

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Codex: Grey Knights – Games Workshop

The Grey Knights are the most mysterious of all the Imperium’s many organisations. Few outside the upper echelons of the Inquisition hold any knowledge of the Chapter’s founding, and even these most trusted of men are denied the full truth. For ten thousand years the Grey Knights have stood between the Imperium and the Daemons of the Warp. An incor […]

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Paracord Fusion Ties – Volume 1 – J.D. Lenzen

J.D. Lenzen is the creator of the highly acclaimed YouTube channel “Tying It All Together”, and the producer of over 200 instructional videos. He’s been formally recognized by the International Guild of Knot Tyers (IGKT) for his contributions to knotting, and is the originator of fusion knotting-innovative knots created through the merging of […]

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Dot Chat: From Energy Campaigner to Solar Finance Entrepreneur

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The Obama Administration Finally Admits Killing 4 Americans

by KlaraGuzm Posted on May 22, 2013

Mother Jones

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After nearly two years of (officially) keeping quiet about what the whole world already knew, the Obama administration on Wednesday formally acknowledged that the United States government had indeed killed four American citizens in drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. This had been fairly common knowledge ever since the strikes occurred in 2011, but the White House, CIA, and other involved parties have maintained (but not really) an official policy of not acknowledging that a targeted killing program exists.

Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed that the administration had signed off on a drone strike that killed, without due process, the Al Qaeda-linked cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in September 2011 in a letter sent to congressional leaders on Wednesday, which was obtained by New York Times reporter Charlie Savage. The letter also acknowledged the killing of Samir Khan (killed in the same drone operation), Awlaki’s teenage son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki (killed in Yemen later that month), and Jude Mohammed (killed in Pakistan in November 2011). However, all except Anwar al-Awlaki were “not specifically targeted by the United States,” according to Holder’s letter.

“Today’s disclosure builds on the administration’s effort to pursue greater transparency around our counter-terrorism operations,” an anonymous White House official told Fox News correspondent Ed Henry.

Here is Holder’s letter:

The letter was released the day before President Obama is scheduled to deliver a big speech on national security at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. He is expected to touch on his administration’s controversial ramped-up use of drone warfare and the status of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The last time Obama publicly discussed US drone strikes and his administration’s targeted killing program was in a Google+ “Fireside Hangout” on February 14:

First of all, I think, there’s never been a drone used on an American citizen on American soil. And, you know, we respect and have a whole bunch of safeguards in terms of how we conduct counter-terrorism operations outside the United States. The rules outside the United States are going to be different then the rules inside the United States. In part because our capacity to, for example, to capture a terrorist inside the United States are very different then in the foothills or mountains of Afghanistan or Pakistan.

But what I think is absolutely true is that it is not sufficient for citizens to just take my word for it that we are doing the right thing. I am the head of the executive branch. And what we’ve done so far is to try to work with Congress on oversight issues. But part of what I am going to have to work with Congress on is to make sure that whatever it is we’re providing Congress, that we have mechanisms to also make sure that the public understands what’s going on, what the constraints are, what the legal parameters are. And that is something that I take very seriously. I am not someone who believes that the president has the authority to do whatever he wants, or whatever she wants, whenever they want, just under the guise of counter-terrorism. There have to be legal checks and balances on it.

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The Obama Administration Finally Admits Killing 4 Americans

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John Kerry Updates His Climate Change Creds at the Arctic Council

by Emily Collins Posted on May 14, 2013

Mother Jones

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Secretary of State John Kerry is headed to Kiruna, Sweden, tomorrow, 14 May, for a ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council, the only diplomatic forum focused exclusively on the Arctic region. Members represent the eight nations with territory north of the Arctic Circle (Canada, the US, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden), plus representatives of Arctic indigenous peoples. The Council’s concerns include a broad swath of environmental issues stemming from a wildly changing global climate amplified in the Arctic.

The meeting comes 25 years after Kerry hosted climate change hearing with Al Gore in the Senate and nothing happened. This year’s Arctic Council is focused on mitigating a future oil spill as drilling in the far north ramps up. Ministers will be signing of an historic Arctic Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response Agreement. The State Department describes this as an agreement that will “forge strong partnerships in advance of an oil spill so that Arctic countries can quickly and cooperatively respond before it endangers lives and threatens fragile ecosystems.”

Sounds great, except we can’t contain offshore spills, no matter the level of cooperation. Still, Kerry’s attendance will boost interest in an obscure Council and the problems—for most—of a faraway place.

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John Kerry Updates His Climate Change Creds at the Arctic Council

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Boehner and the Benghazi Emails: Been There, Done That?

by JoanSanderz Posted on May 13, 2013

Mother Jones

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House Speaker John Boehner, according to Politico, is obsessed with Benghazi. And last week, after ABC News revealed the revised talking points crafted by the Obama administration following the September 11 attack that left four Americans dead, Boehner demanded that the administration release emails related to these talking points. “The truth shouldn’t be hidden from the American people behind a White House firewall,” Boehner declared. “Four Americans lost their lives in this terrorist attack. Congress will continue to investigate this issue, using all of the resources at our disposal.” But thanks, in part, to the Republicans, the truth isn’t being hidden. Boehner and his fellow Republicans had access to those emails—and used them for a public report they issued weeks ago that scooped the ABC News story.

In March, Boehner, according to a senior administration official, was invited to a White House-arranged briefing where the emails and other Benghazi-related material could be privately reviewed. Boehner did not attend; he sent staff, who attended with other House Republicans. Asked why Boehner did not participate in this session and why he did not at that time demand the release of the emails, Brendan Buck, his press secretary, says, “This is embarrassing pushback. Do you recall the report we put out in April? The committees were compiling information as part of their investigation and when the report was done, the committees requested the release of the emails.” In an April 23 letter, five GOP House committee chairs did ask the White House to turn over to their committees the documents it had allowed the GOPers to review.

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Boehner and the Benghazi Emails: Been There, Done That?

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