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Wednesday, July 26, 2006 |
CorpWatch: "Joep van den Nieuwenhuyzen, was called a financial magician or the company-doctor because of his knack for buying defunct companies, nursing them back to financial health, and then selling them for a large profit.
Later this summer, however, Nieuwenhuyzen will go on trial for driving RDM (Rotterdamse Droogdok Maatschappij - Rotterdam Drydock Company) into bankruptcy.
In 1995 Nieuwenhuyzen took over RDM, a Dutch company that dates back to the 1920s when it built and sold submarines, that had also fallen on hard times. The government sold it to him for just over $20 million, but he realized that he could use it to make even bigger business deals because of its history and reputation.
RDM was a key part of a major Dutch arms production system that manufactures warships, electronics, munitions, and spare parts for aircrafts - all exports heavily supported by the government. Indeed, for a country that is not involved in major military operations, the Netherlands ranks an astonishing number seven on the world list of arms exporting countries.
A deal with Chile clearly reveals how Nieuwenhuyzen made some of his money. On September 11, 1973, when General Pinochet seized power from Chile's leftists, the Netherlands's socialist government cut almost all ties with the new fascist regime. The Hague's policy at the time was to ban all weapons sales to Santiago.
Unknown to the general public, however, in 1995, two ambitious Dutch bureaucrats met secretly with Chilean army officers in Santiago and offered them 202 Leopard 1V tanks at $50,000 a piece, not including munitions and spare parts.
Nieuwenhuyzen lives in beautiful surroundings in the shade of trees. But his trees are the evergreens that dot Switzerland where he keeps his mountain-top residence and the palms that sway in the breezes of Curaçao, the largest of the Dutch Antilles islands in the Caribbean.
The Netherlands is the seventh largest arms exporting country in the world. Critics have charged that the Netherlands is profiting from arms trade with countries likely to use the weaponry to violate human rights."
12:48:31 PM 
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BradBlog: "The State of Alaska website shows 16 of 40 house districts with more than 200% voter turnout, Also, if you add up the vote totals from each district they come to more than 100,000 votes for state wide candidates than the summary reports show.
More than 7 months ago the Democrats asked for an explanation. The state said it could not release the data files because they were proprietary to Diebold.
Diebold gave the state permission to release the files.
The state still refused. The Democrats went to court, the state asked for extension after extension."
11:39:15 AM
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The American Dream in shatters or how the poor get dinged at every turn.
"1 in 4 U.S. jobs pay less than a poverty-level income.
1 in 7 have no work, no spousal support, and no other government benefits
46 million Americans are uninsured - a 15% increase since 2000."
11:36:40 AM
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DailyMail: "Border guards seized a British lorry on its way to make a delivery to the Iranian military - after discovering it was packed with radioactive material that could be used to build a dirty bomb.
The lorry set off from Kent on its way to Tehran but was stopped by officials at a checkpoint on Bulgaria's northernborder with Romania after a scanner indicated radiation levels 200 times above normal.
On board they found ten lead-lined boxes addressed to the Iranian Ministry of Defence. Inside each box was a soil-testing device, containing highly dangerous quantities of radioactive caesium 137 and americium-beryllium.
The soil testers had been sent to Iran by a British firm with the apparent export approval of the Department of Trade and Industry."
A well-informed guess: this is an attempt (by MI6?) to smuggle 'WMD material' into Iran, so that after the invasion of Iran the invaders can claim Iran was trying to produce 'dirty bombs'. Too bad the Bulgarians checked the radiation levels.
The build-up to a full-blown war against Lebanon, Syria and Iran is going full throttle. The White House is rallying the world behind its policy toward Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Which means bombing, destroying infrastructures, killing civilians, in short doing everything prohibited by the Geneva Convention.
Kofi Annan: "I am shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces of a United Nations observer post in southern Lebanon that has killed two United Nations military observers, with two more feared dead.
This coordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long established and clearly marked United Nations post at Khiyam occurred despite personal assurances given to me by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that United Nations positions would be spared Israeli fire. Furthermore, General Alain Pelligrini, the United Nations Force Commander in south Lebanon, had been in repeated contact with Israeli officers throughout the day on Tuesday, stressing the need to protect that particular United Nations position from attack."
There is no doubt that this is a deliberate attack. The Israeli troops were informed of the presence of the UN post and even if they weren't, the secret services would have known about them. The US-Israeli arrogance and criminality is reaching its peak. This is becoming a killing spree by psychopaths.
LATimes: "Six Red Cross volunteers were wounded in the Sunday attack, and the injured family they were ferrying to safety suffered fresh agonies."
11:05:29 AM
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If you speak German you can take advantage of a free download of Jules Verne's Meister Zacharius for your holidays.
10:59:02 AM
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