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amerikan psycho .....

The United States & its comrade-in-arms, Al Qaeda; & other tales of an empire gone mad ….Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s ... Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s ... Libya 2011 ... Syria 2012 ... In military conflicts in each of these countries the United States and al Qaeda (or one of its associates) have been on the same side. 1What does this tell us about the United States' "War On Terrorism"?Regime change has been the American goal on each occasion: overthrowing communists (or "communists"), Serbians, Slobodan Milosevic, Moammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad ... all heretics or infidels, all non-believers in the empire, all inconvenient to the empire. Why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, has the United States invested so much blood and treasure against the PLO, Iraq, and Libya, and now Syria, all mideast secular governments? Why are Washington's closest Arab allies in the Middle East the Islamic governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain? Bahrain being the home of an American naval base; Saudi Arabia and Qatar being conduits to transfer arms to the Syrian rebels.Why, if democracy means anything to the United States are these same close allies in the Middle East all monarchies?Why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, did the United States shepherd Kosovo — 90% Islamist and perhaps the most gangsterish government in the world — to unilaterally declare independence from Serbia in 2008, an independence so illegitimate and artificial that the majority of the world's nations still have not recognized it? Why — since Kosovo's ruling Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) have been known for their trafficking in women, heroin, and human body parts (sic) — has the United States been pushing for Kosovo's membership in NATO and the European Union? (Just what the EU needs: another economic basket case.) Between 1998 and 2002, the KLA appeared on the State Department terrorist list, remaining there until the United States decided to make them an ally, due in no small part to the existence of a major American military base in Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel, well situated in relation to planned international oil and gas pipelines coming from the vast landlocked Caspian Sea area to Europe. In November 2005, following a visit to Bondsteel, Alvaro Gil-Robles, the human rights envoy of the Council of Europe, described the camp as a "smaller version of Guantánamo". 2Why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, did the United States pave the way to power for the Libyan Islamic rebels, who at this very moment are killing other Libyans in order to institute a more fundamentalist Islamic state? Why do American officials speak endlessly about human rights, yet fully support the Libyan Islamic rebels despite the fact that Doctors Without Borders suspended its work in prisons in the Islamic-rebel city of Misurata because torture was so rampant that some detainees were brought for care only to make them fit for further interrogation? 3Why is the United States supporting Islamic Terrorists in Libya and Syria who are persecuting Christians? And why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, did US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice — who daily attacks the Syrian government on moral grounds — not condemn the assassination of four Syrian high officials on July 18, in all likelihood carried out by al Qaeda types? RT, the Russian television channel broadcast in various parts of the United States, noted her silence in this matter. Does anyone know of any American media that did the same?So, if you want to understand this thing called United States foreign policy ... forget about the War on Terrorism, forget about September 11, forget about democracy, forget about freedom, forget about human rights, forget about religion, forget about the people of Libya and Syria ... keep your eyes on the prize ... Whatever advances American global domination. Whatever suits their goals at the moment. There is no moral factor built into the DNA of US foreign policy.Killing Hope: US Military & CIA Interventions Since World War II 

and not only gun metal...

 

But some say clean-up of deadly Vietnam War-era chemical is too little, too late


LAST UPDATED AT 15:09 ON Fri 10 Aug 2012

NEARLY 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War, the US has launched a $43 million project to clean up Agent Orange, the chemical it sprayed across large tracts of the country.

Agent Orange was a code name for one of the defoliants - chemicals sprayed to cause leaves to drop off plants - used by the US. It contains dioxin, a toxin linked to birth defects, cancers and other diseases.

The US military started spraying Agent Orange over Vietnam's jungles in 1961 in an attempt to deprive the guerrilla fighters of their valuable cover and food sources. By the time the chemical assault had ended, nearly 21 million gallons had been dropped.

The big clean-up is to start at the Danang Airbase, one of the two dozen sites where Agent Orange was stored. The concentration of dioxin in the soil there is nearly 400 times the globally accepted maximum standard. Sediment will be excavated and then heated to destroy the dioxins.

 

Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/health-science/48430/us-starts-agent-orange-clean-vietnam-after-40-years#ixzz23EAtyhSL

 

Meanwhile back in Rhodes, Sydney, Australia...

 

Major remediation

With the exception of the area bounded by Mary, Walker, Marquet and Gauthorpe Streets, almost all of the land on the western side of the railway line has needed remediation. Most of the sediments along the sea wall from Oulton Avenue to the northern tip of the peninsula also require(d) remediation. The balance of the bay remains contaminated by numerous chemicals including phthalates, dioxins, lead, heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (coal tars), but to a lesser extent than the areas closer to the sea wall on the eastern shore of the bay.[9][10]

The remediation of the former Union Carbide site, the former Allied Feeds site and a strip of heavily dioxin contaminated sediments in Homebush Bay, have been the subject of extensive analysis, investigations and community activism, including by the Rhodes Peninsula Group.[11] The remediation is approved and monitored by the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change Contaminated Sites section with extensive community consultation.[12] A strip of sediment in Homebush Bay between 40 and 100 metres wide and about 850 metres long along the eastern foreshore is being excavated and processed by direct thermal desorption and incineration to remove dioxins and other volatile organics. The remediation proposals were subject to a Parliamentary Inquiry by the NSW Standing Committee on State Development Committee.[9][13] The remediation is expected to be completed by February 2011.

The former Berger Paints site near Oulton Avenue, and the CSR Chemicals / Orica Chemicals site on the southern side of Mary Street west of the railway, were also remediated. The Rhodes Waterside Shopping centre is located on the former Berger Paints site. Apartments are being developed on the former Orica Chemicals site, with commercial buildings along the railway line. Apartments are being developed on the former Union Carbide site and the former Allied Feeds site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodes,_New_South_Wales

 

If you are not familiar with what this means: read the footnotes...

^ Union Carbide is now a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Company which made Agent Orange, used as a defoliant during the Vietnam War, at its Rhodes plant

Presently some work in the Rhodes area is digging below the surface "that has been remediated down to about two metres with a top coat" and is bringing back to the surface a lot of crap, including "agent orange"...

Viva los Olympicos!... Two things: Homebush/Rhodes was the site of the Sydney Olympics (crap!) and Dow Chemicals is the major sponsor of the London's Olympics:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/10/olympics-2012-bbc-sponsor

The BBC was forced to reposition cameras in its London 2012 Olympic Park studio, after giving free advertising to controversial official sponsor Dow Chemical in the buildup to Danny Boyle's opening ceremony.

BBC production staff had to make the hurried adjustment after a Dow Chemical giant billboard wrap on the outside of the Westfield Stratford shopping centre was clearly visible to viewers through the studio window during the Opening Ceremony Countdown programme on Friday 27 July.

They were alerted to the inadvertent gaffe, which breaks the BBC's editorial guidelines, in time to shift the camera positions for the 9am BBC1 Olympics show the following morning, Saturday 28 July.

"As soon as we became aware that there was undue prominence for a commercial brand within camera shot, we changed the angle of the camera," said a spokesman for the BBC.

The BBC London 2012 studio is situated on top of container boxes with a floor-to-ceiling glass wall, affording a view behind guests and presenters of the Olympic Park and Westfield Stratford shopping centre.

 

And who is paying for the "remediation"?...

So who's responsible? The obvious answer is Union Carbide. But it is long gone from the site. Instead, through a complicated series of land deals during the 1990s, the Government bought the site for a peppercorn and assumed responsibility for the clean-up.

Now its agencies must judge whether the clean-up method proposed by the prospective buyers of the site, Trafalgar Properties and Theiss Environmental Services (and that proposed by Meriton, the owner of the adjoining Allied Feeds site), is up to scratch.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/06/03/1022982671118.html

 

And who is doing the remediation?...

http://www.rhodesremediation.com.au/

 

But how deep is the remediation?...

 

War has long cancerous tentacles...