After 8 long years… a paltry $70 million.. that’s chump change,. There again, what can one expect when 98.5% of DC lobbying efforts aimed at our *alleged* representatives in DC come straight from corporate America? Big business is not going to benefit from treating first responders, and as far as they are concerned, these people might as well just get sick (and/or die) since they are not contributing to their bottom lines.
How many people are going to die from 9/11 related illnesses? Nobody knows of course, but the quantity of toxic material including micron-size particles of asbestos, mercury, pcbs, gypsum, lead and other heavy metals, radioactive Americium, phosgene and others is possibly a recipe for a potential epidemic of mesothelial cancers and other severe ailments in the coming years amongst 10s of thousands of people who inhaled that witches brew for up to 3 months after the attack. Correct me if I am wrong, but so far over 650 people have died from 9/11 related illnesses to date.
How come we fund multiple wars directed against innocent people who did not attacks us that day, to the tune of $1,000,000,000,000+ so far…. and without end…. but the brave folk who rush towards disaster in order to save people here at home are first lied to by the criminally irresponsible Whitman and others, then brushed aside, and finally, grudgingly, almost a decade later, are offered a pathetic pittance. The amount offered to these heroes is the equivalent of funding the Iraq war for about 4 hours and 45 minutes at the current rate of expenditure, in this vast never-ending gravy-train of corporate-welfare for the parasites in the “defense/security/surveillance” etc. sector. “
http://www.911blogger.com/node/22107
2. “The Afghan ‘Experiment’
When all else fails, mobilize the social scientists!
We have launched a massive social engineering project in the wilds of Central Asia and it’s only natural, therefore, that we should deploy platoons of sociologists “to place the expertise and experience of social scientists and regional experts, coupled with reach-back, open-source research, directly in support of deployed units engaging in full-spectrum operations,” as the HTS web site puts it.
Armed with the mantle of “science,” as well as rhetorical tropes of “realism” and self-described “pragmatism,” the legions of Goodness are fighting the “good war” whilst conducting a vast “experiment,” in Petraues-talk, on the Afghan people. I’m veering awfully close to violating Godwin’s law, here, but I can’t help but think of the infamous Dr. Mengele, in this connection, as well as innumerable mad scientist movies in which the scientist-villain invariably wants to conquer the world.
Of the many conceits of “modernity,” this has got to be the most pretentiously laughable. The idea that we can amass enough knowledge of the various Afghan subcultures to be able to manipulate them into supporting the military occupation of their country by a foreign power would be funny if the results weren’t so tragic. But what else can we expect from our smug Washington elites, whose narcissistic fixations are devoid of either prudence or respect for historical experience?
You don’t have to have a degree in the social sciences to understand why the Afghan people will never submit to occupation, but, assuming the HTS is part of the Obama administration’s jobs program, I wouldn’t want to contribute to the unemployment figures by letting them in on what everyone else knows: that their “anthropological” strategy is bound to fail, no matter how “scientific” it may be. It is typical of Washington’s smarty-pants liberals, who think they are the apex of “modernity,” to think they have a formidable weapon – one costing $90.6 million – in the HTS.
“Science” cannot defeat the natural human desire for freedom from foreign domination, and in the Afghans this universal trait is unusually pronounced. Just ask the former Soviet leaders – those ill-starred advocates of “scientific” socialism – whose hubris was humbled and brought down by the mujahideen. We emulate their example at our peril.”
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/12/10/the-afghan-experiment/
3. “The Nine Surges of Obama’s War
How to Escalate in Afghanistan”
http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2009/12/10/the-nine-surges-of-obamas-war/
4. “Obama creating ‘a sweeping immunity doctrine for torturers’
“We still don’t have a definitive binding determination that what went on in the last eight years was illegal,” he added. “And without that kind of determination, it will be all too easy for an unscrupulous lawyer in an unscrupulous future administration to write another memo saying that there is no legal prohibition against monstrous conduct.”
“Torture is not an issue where there should be one person on both sides of the table on Hardball — torture is universally prescribed as clearly illegal.”
…
“The effect of the Obama administration’s argument across these civil cases is the creation of a sweeping immunity doctrine for torturers,” said Abdo, citing as one example Obama’s defense of torture memo author John Yoo.
“The government can engage in torture, declare it a state secret or a matter of national security, and by virtue of that declaration avoid any accountability for conduct that the entire world and the United States have always recognized as illegal in all instances,” he said.”
http://rawstory.com/2009/12/aclu-obama-creating-a-sweeping-immunity-doctrine-torturers/
Now, the Independent notes that the Copenhagen framework uses Enron-style accounting tricks to give the impression of cutting carbon, without really doing so:
The first week of this summit is being dominated by the representatives of the rich countries trying to lace the deal with Enron-style accounting tricks that will give the impression of cuts, without the reality. It’s essential to understand these shenanigans this week, so we can understand the reality of the deal that will be announced with great razzmatazz next week …
A study by the University of Stanford found that most of the projects that are being funded as “cuts” either don’t exist, don’t work, or would have happened anyway. Yet this isn’t a small side-dish to the deal: it’s the main course …
Trick one: hot air. The nations of the world were allocated permits to release greenhouse gases back in 1990, when the Soviet Union was still a vast industrial power – so it was given a huge allocation. But the following year, it collapsed, and its industrial base went into freefall – along with its carbon emissions. It was never going to release those gases after all. But Russia and the eastern European countries have held on to them in all negotiations as “theirs”. Now, they are selling them to rich countries who want to purchase “cuts”. Under the current system, the US can buy them from Romania and say they have cut emissions – even though they are nothing but a legal fiction.”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/12/copenhagen-framework-demands-huge.html
