23 August 2012, Australia’s Quantas Airways reported its first yearly loss since it was privatized 17 years ago.
Quantas lost $250 million USD from June 2011 to June 2012. The airline blames the high cost of fuel, coupled with flight cancellations and employee strikes.
The loss means that Quantas will now put on hold a huge order (35 aircraft) for the latest 787 airliners made by U.S. company Boeing.
23 August 2012, after buying back control of its Swedish cell phone operation, Sony announced it will lay off 15% of the employees.
Sony will also move most of the Mobile Communication division back to Japan.
Until Sony’s buyback, the Mobil Communication division was a joint venture with Sweden’s Ericsson. The cuts are on top of planned lay offs in Sony’s television division.
“With 96% of the world’s population and 80% of the world’s wealth being outside of the United States, the international market opportunities for agricultural products are great.”-Idaho Department of Agriculture
According to the Idaho Department of Agriculture, farm exports are up 15% compared to 2011, and 2011 was a record setting year!
“Canada and Mexico are Idaho’s largest agricultural export markets, with Japan and China following closely behind.”-Idaho Department of Agriculture
South Korea has also become a top importer of Idaho ag products, seeing a 98% increase since 2011!
Dairy has become Idaho’s number one ag product, making up 35% of Idaho’s exports! Compared to other U.S. states, Idaho’s exports rank 3rd for vegetables and 4th for dairy products (2011 stats).
For the first six months of 2012, total ag exports hit $2.7 billion USD for Idaho! State officials thank currency exchange rates, strong commodity markets, trade agreements and growing international consumer demand.
It also doesn’t hurt that Idaho’s agricultural industry produces far more than what the state’s population of 1.5 million people can eat.
Unfortunately most of the employees of the Idaho ag industry are migrants. Idaho employment laws allows farm workers to be paid less than minimum wage.
Famous last words: “Sustainable, renewable energy is going to play a big role in Idaho’s future.”-Butch Otter, current Governor of Idaho, 2011 statement
Reality check: “New projects are non-existent. There’s no support for renewables in this state.”-Peter Richardson, Boise attorney
As of 21 August 2012, Hoku Corporation stock was worth only 9 cents per share!
According to a recent Associated Press (AP) report, all of the promises of support for renewable energy related companies in Idaho, were false.
Pocatello’s Hoku Materials polysilicon factory for solar power panels is now officially mothballed. Boise’s Micron Technology’s energy venture is dead, and Emmett’s biomass power project failed.
Large scale wind power in Idaho is also being targeted.
The AP says the reasons range from federal tax breaks ending for the alternative energy industry, to economic war between China and the United States, to the fact that electricity rates in Idaho are already the second lowest in the country.
But what happened to all those promises of support from the State? The bottom line is that the government of Idaho does not want to throw money at new alternative energy companies, state officials are all talk, no walk (but they love to take the credit for companies moving to Idaho, Butch Otter did with Hoku in his 2007 State of the State speech). After all, Idaho’s main source of electricity already comes from decades old renewable and reliable hydroelectric dams (maybe that’s what Governor Otter was referring to in his 2011 statement).
Another thing, state lawmakers have not required local utility companies to buy into these new energy companies, as have the states of Oregon and Washington. In fact many of these new companies were required to buy their electricity from Idaho Power, Rocky Mountain Power and Avista!
“…HP carries so much weight in the area, when they do something, when HP sneezes, you know, there is a ripple effect.”-Matt Rissell, Idaho Technology Council’s Software Alliance, interview with Boise State Public Radio
22 August 2012, Hewlett Packard (HP) is expected to report a record quarterly loss of almost $9 billion USD. It’s the largest loss for HP ever!
HP is already in the process of laying off 27,000 employees. People in Idaho are worried because HP has a huge campus in Boise, and any layoffs there will definitely hit other Boise area businesses: “For every hundred workers you lose, you’re going to lose at least another fifty.”-Don Holley, economics professor Boise State University
But despite all this doom and gloom, HP is actually benefiting Boise State University, in fact it’s benefiting another chip/computer maker, Idaho’s own Micron.
On 21 August 2012, it was announced that Hewlett Packard donated half a million U.S. dollars worth of equipment to the new Micron Business and Economics Building, located on the Boise State campus.
“We are working with Boise State to provide key technology that will enhance the student experience and help build future business and community leaders.”-Von Hansen, HP Boise
Notice Hansen didn’t say anything about employment, the focus is on “business and community leaders”. Most leaders actually have a poor history of new job creation.
21 August 2012, the Environment Ministry of Japan has revised upward the estimated amount of radioactive waste in nine prefectures around Fukushima Daiichi.
As of now, there is 42,575 tons of waste, containing radioactive cesium levels of more than 8,000 becquerels per kilogram, in storage. Officials originally estimated that only 50,000 tons of debris would be contaminated with that much radiation, but it’s now obvious there is much more.
A newly passed law makes the national government of Japan responsible for disposal of all nuclear waste. Recently it was decided that four or five prefectures will be designated as permanent nuclear waste disposal sites. However, there is great concern over the fact that Japan is crisscrossed by seismic faults. Officials stated that any new waste site must not be built near a fault line.
Not surprisingly at least 75% of the contaminated waste is being collected in Fukushima Prefecture.
21 August 2012, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCo) announced it has caught fish near the failed Fukushima Daiichi reactors that have as much as 38,000 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium!
TEPCo says they’ve caught 20 kinds of fish and shellfish from 5 locations along the Pacific coast, just 1 kilometer (0.62 mile) off Minamisoma City, from mid July to the beginning of August.
A type of trout was contaminated with the most cesium, 38,000 becquerels. That’s 380 times the safe limit set by the Japanese government! To top that, the last time TEPCo tested local fish the amount of contamination was 18.8 times the safe limit!
Fishing was allowed to resume about 50 kilometers northeast of Fukushima Daiichi, on a trial bases, but not for rock trout or other fish that are showing up highly contaminated in TEPCo’s surveys.
20 August 2012
USA (USA without periods means United States Army) General Martin Dempsey is in Afghanistan to find out why so many Afghan government forces are getting pissed off enough at U.S. forces that they open fire upon them. Dempsey is meeting with USMC General John Allen.
ISAF stated: “An International Security Assistance Force service member died when an individual wearing an Afghan Uniformed Police uniform turned his weapon against ISAF service members in southern Afghanistan today.”
In Paktiya Province, a convoy belonging to an advisor to President Hamid Karzai, ran over a mine: “Mriza Ali Zadran, brother of Amanullah Khan Zadran, his uncle and his nephew were killed following the blast.”-Rohullah Samoon, governor of Paktiya
19 August 2012
ISAF stated: “Three International Security Assistance Force service members died following an improvised explosive device attack in eastern Afghanistan today.”
ISAF claims they killed a “leader” in Kunar Province, using a NATO airstrike.
In Bamiyan Province, at least four New Zealand Kiwi troops were killed, after crossing a road where Mujahideen planted a mine.
Afghan police officials in Kandahar Province claim a policeman shot and killed a U.S. led occupying soldier. They say the shooting took place inside a police station.
USMC General John Allen met with President Hamid Karzai, to discuss the increasing Green on Blue attacks. This after numb nuts U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta demanded Karzai do something about such attacks.
In Kunar Province, villagers caught a murderer. The man was convicted of killing another man from a rival family. But at the execution, where about 80 people had gathered, the United States launched a drone strike, killing about 60. ISAF said this about the drone strike: “…there are no civilian casualties…” ISAF swears all the people present were Mujahideen planning an attack.
18 August 2012
In Kunar Province, local government officials say the United States killed four civilians during an airstrike.
In Helmand Province, U.K. Ministry of Defence says one of their occupying Red Coat soldiers was killed.
17 August 2012
In Kandahar Province, two U.S. occupying personnel were wounded by an Afghan government soldier.
ISAF stated: “Two U.S. Forces-Afghanistan service members died this morning as a result of an insider threat attack in Farah province, Afghanistan today. A member of the Afghan Local Police turned his weapon against two USFOR-A service members. The attacker was shot and killed.”
In Faryab Province, an Afghan politician was assassinated. He was shot while walking out of a Mosque.
“…users of targeted killing technology should be required to subject themselves, in the case of each and every death, to impartial investigation. If they do not establish a mechanism to do so, it will be my recommendation that the UN should put the mechanisms in place through the Human Rights Council, the General Assembly and the Office of the High Commissioner.…..The Obama administration continues formally to adopt the position that it will neither confirm nor deny the existence of the drone program, whilst allowing senior officials to give public justifications of its supposed legality in personal lectures and interviews. In reality the administration is holding its finger in the dam of public accountability. There are now a large number of law suits, in different parts of the world, including in the U.K., Pakistan and in the U.S. itself, through which pressure for investigation and accountability is building.”-Ben Emmerson, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism
In the past week more than 27 people were killed by U.S. UAV strikes, in Pakistan. The victims included women and children.
Also in the past week, at least eight civilians were killed, and 30 wounded, by U.S. drone strikes in Somalia. At least three people were killed by U.S. drone strike in Yemen.
On 15 August 2012, Pakistan’s Senate Committee on Defence and Defence Production released their own study on just who the victims of drone strikes are. They concluded that increasingly the victims are not combatants!
Declaration of Guayaquil
IN SUPPORT OF THE REPUBLIC OF ECUADOR
THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF UNASUR
The Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of UNASUR extraordinary meeting in the city of Guayaquil, on August 19, 2012, considering:
That the Minister of Foreign Trade and Integration of Ecuador, informed the Council that the citizen Julian Assange, requested on 19 June 2012, political asylum in the Embassy of Ecuador in London, a matter on which the Governments of Ecuador, the U.K. and Sweden, have been holding diplomatic talks about the demands for the extradition of Mr. Assange and the request for asylum;
That Ecuador was considering the request for asylum in accordance with the principles of protection of human rights and international law;
On 15 August, the Government of the Republic of Ecuador was notified in a U.K. memorandum a threat to “take action to arrest Mr. Assange in the current facilities of the Embassy” by invoking its national law on facilities diplomatic and Consular of 1987 (diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987);
That pursuant to Article 22 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961, of which the U.K. is a signatory, “premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them without the consent of the Head of Mission” and that “the premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of transport of the mission may not be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution”;
That according to the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, states must refrain from the threat or use of force or to act in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations in international relations, and solve their differences peacefully.
That the Security Council of the United Nations, in SC/10463 press release of November 29, 2011, condemned in the strongest terms violations of diplomatic immunity and recalled the fundamental principle of the inviolability of diplomatic missions states consular receptors in relation to the provisions of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
UNASUR declaration:
1. Express its solidarity and support to the Government of the Republic of Ecuador to the threat of violation of local diplomatic mission.
2. Reaffirm the sovereign right of states to grant asylum.
3. Strongly condemn the threat of use of force between states and to reiterate the full observance of the principles enshrined in international law, respect for sovereignty and the faithful observance of international treaties.
4. To reaffirm the fundamental principle of the inviolability of the premises of diplomatic missions and consular offices and the obligation of the receiving states, in relation to the provisions of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
5. Reaffirm the principle of international law under which no law can be invoked for failure to complete an international obligation, as well is reflected in Article 27 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1969.
6. Reiterate the relevance of institutions of asylum and refuge to protect the human rights of people who believe that their life or limb is threatened.
7. Urge the parties to continue dialogue and direct negotiations in search of a mutually acceptable settlement under international law.
Guayaquil, August 19, 2012, 21:30 hours
Union of South American Nations are: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela