The Obama/Pentagon War Narrative, the Real War and Where Afghan Civilian Deaths Do Matter

This article investigates two related issues: (1) the on-the-ground experience of the fierce US war. in Afghanistan, in contrast to the Pentagon story and the mainstream media; (2) The relentless efforts of Obama and the Pentagon to control the public account of this war. While the real war spread geographically and violence intensified, so did the efforts of the United States. to build a positive reading. The examination of the corpses (of foreign occupation forces and innocent Afghan civilians) reveals a situation of exchange. The elites of the countries of the NATO countries have understood that they have entered a dead end and begin to back down

Nineteenth-Century Bahia\u27s Passion for British Salted Cod: From the Seas of Newfoundland to the Portuguese Shops of Salvador\u27s Cidade Baixa, 1822-1914

Dried cod has played a similar role to sugar in the international chain of commerce. It became a major traded commodity between British North America (Newfoundland, Nova Scotia Gaspe) in the nineteenth century. Cheap cod fed the slaves who grew and produced the sugar (and coffee and cotton) which in turn energised the workers of the Industrial Revolution who worked the machines which made the commodities of empire. The machines in factories and their output provided the material basis of Empire. Sugar and cod were important in the cultures of Britain, Newfoundland, the West Indies, West Africa and Brazil. Demand (tastes) and (low) price dictated that salted cod would become a main staple in the West Indies and Brazil even though ample supplies of fresh fish existed locally

The Black Diamonds of Bahia (Carbonados) and the Building of Euro-America: A Half-century Supply Monopoly (1880s-1930s)

This paper traces the birth, maturity and decline of what was Bahia’s natural supply monopoly of black or industrial diamonds: first used in polishing materials (for consumption); then in drilling; and by 1940 they were employed in making parts for the Third Reich’s premier fighter plane, the Messerschmitt bF 109. The evolution in the way these stones were produced, the agents involved in production and distribution, and how the income was distributed along the commodity chain are examined. The importance of technological change is documented with the huge boost in demand for industrial diamonds when the Leschot diamond-head drill was invented (1863). The First World War cut off Bahia from traditional intermediaries and opened up a space for North American capital. A great surge in black diamond production in Bahia was led by the Bandler Corporation of New York, which introduced modern machine-based mining in the late 1920s; but the Great Depression doomed the venture. Between 1931 and 1941, keen secret competition arose to secure access to Bahia’s diamonds between the rising Axis and the Allied powers given the crucial role these stones played in making the modern weapons of war. The first section analyses the emergence of Brazil’s natural monopoly in black diamonds. The second points out the crucial importance technological change (the Leschot diamond-head drill). The next section develops a unique analysis of how earnings were distributed along the black diamond commodity chain at the turn of the twentieth century. The final section underscores how the Great War created a vacuum into which North American capital plunged, such that by the late 1920s for the first time modern machinery was being used for the mass production of black diamonds in Brazil. While the Great Depression frustrated these efforts, the looming Axis and Allied contenders carried out secret schemes to secure Brazil’s black diamonds so central to the execution of modern war

An Excess of Corruption and a Deficit of Toilets: American and Karzai’s Successes in Afghanistan

Afghanistan might be characterized as having a paucity of toilets and an excess of corruption. These two aspects capture the post-Taliban essence of the country. The “achievements” of Hamid Karzai the de facto mayor of Kabul, the United States and NATO in Afghanistan after more than eight years of U.S. occupation and approximately $25 billion in disbursed (2001-9) non-military aid, include Afghanistan being ranked as the worst place in the world for sanitation (per UNICEF data) and in 2009 posting 179th (out of 180 countries) in Transparency International’s corruption-perceptions index. The latter figure for 2005 showed Afghanistan ranking 117th out of 159 countries

The Obama/Pentagon War Narrative, the Real War and Where Afghan Civilian Deaths Do Matter

This article investigates two related issues: (1) the on-the-ground experience of the fierce US war. in Afghanistan, in contrast to the Pentagon story and the mainstream media; (2) The relentless efforts of Obama and the Pentagon to control the public account of this war. While the real war spread geographically and violence intensified, so did the efforts of the United States. to build a positive reading. The examination of the corpses (of foreign occupation forces and innocent Afghan civilians) reveals a situation of exchange. The elites of the countries of the NATO countries have understood that they have entered a dead end and begin to back down

Ice in the Tropics: the Export of ‘Crystal Blocks of Yankee Coldness’ to India and Brazil

The Boston natural ice trade thrived during 1830-70 based upon Frederic Tudor’s idea of combining two useless products – natural winter ice in New England ponds and sawdust from Maine’s lumber mills. Tudor ice was exported extensively to the tropics from the West Indies to Brazil and the East Indies as well as to southern ports of the United States. In tropical ice ports, imported natural ice was a luxury product, e.g., serving to chill claret wines (Calcutta), champagne (Havana and Manaus), and mint juleps (New Orleans and Savannah) and used in luxury hotels or at banquets. In the temperate United States, natural ice was employed to preserve foods (cold storage) and to cool water (Americans’ peculiar love of ice water). In both temperate and tropical regions natural ice found some use for medicinal purposes (to calm fevers). With the invention of a new technology to manufacture artificial ice as part of the Industrial Revolution, the natural ice export trade dwindled as import substituting industrialization proceeded in the tropics. By the turn of the twentieth century, ice factories had been established in half a dozen Brazilian port cities. All that remained of the once extensive global trade in natural ice was a sailing ship which docked in Rio Janeiro at Christmas time laden with ice and apples from New England

Constitutional Law - Defenses - Entrapment

The Supreme Court of the United States has held that the defense of entrapment is available only if the police implant a criminal design or intent in an otherwise innocent person and thereby induce him to commit a crime. United States v. Russell, 411 U.S. 423 (1973)