Flu Kills The Torture Memos

By Lori Price

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In a 'Holy convenience, Batman!' moment, a 'unique' flu virus (one likely concocted in US Army labs) overtakes media coverage of revelations that the highest levels of the US government instructed the CIA (and private contractors) to torture terror suspects.

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Scientists said the virus combines genetic material from pigs, birds and humans in a way researchers have not seen before. "We are very, very concerned," World Health Organization spokesman Thomas Abraham said. "We have what appears to be a novel virus and it has spread from human to human," he said. "It's all hands on deck at the moment."

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Guess where the first swine flu outbreak occurred? That's right, Fort Dix, New Jersey, in 1976. Also likely created in a US Army lab. Thirteen soldiers died, leading the US government to force a questionable vaccine on the population -- backed by a legal liability escape clause mandated by and for the pharma-terrorists. Next, people started dying not from the flu -- but from the *vaccine.*

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Every major media outlet has reported the fact that US/UK bioterrorists have been manipulating the avian flu virus in university and Army labs. This new flu strain, one that 'no one has ever seen,' contains avian flu. Now, how does *that* happen?

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CLG has been covering flu 'oddities' for eight years. See: Flu 'Oddities' and Flu 'Oddities' News Archives.

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http://www.legitgov.org/flu_kills_torture_memos_260409.html

By Lori Price

Â

In a 'Holy convenience, Batman!' moment, a 'unique' flu virus (one likely concocted in US Army labs) overtakes media coverage of revelations that the highest levels of the US government instructed the CIA (and private contractors) to torture terror suspects.

Â

Scientists said the virus combines genetic material from pigs, birds and humans in a way researchers have not seen before. "We are very, very concerned," World Health Organization spokesman Thomas Abraham said. "We have what appears to be a novel virus and it has spread from human to human," he said. "It's all hands on deck at the moment."

Â

Guess where the first swine flu outbreak occurred? That's right, Fort Dix, New Jersey, in 1976. Also likely created in a US Army lab. Thirteen soldiers died, leading the US government to force a questionable vaccine on the population -- backed by a legal liability escape clause mandated by and for the pharma-terrorists. Next, people started dying not from the flu -- but from the *vaccine.*

Â

Every major media outlet has reported the fact that US/UK bioterrorists have been manipulating the avian flu virus in university and Army labs. This new flu strain, one that 'no one has ever seen,' contains avian flu. Now, how does *that* happen?

Â

CLG has been covering flu 'oddities' for eight years. See: Flu 'Oddities' and Flu 'Oddities' News Archives.

Â

http://www.legitgov.org/flu_kills_torture_memos_260409.html

Googlemap of all swine flu occurances

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http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=p&msa=0&msid=106484775090296685271.0004681a37b713f6b5950&ll=32.639375,-110.390625&spn=24.413424,39.4628

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How Borrowing and Spending Destroyed America: The Realities of War, Bidness, and Taxes

By Mickey Walker

Setting the Stage

Something just hit me. Say you wanted to create a world boom economy where arms and bullets flourished and mercenaries were paid 10 times the price of real soldiers and real armies. What do you do? First, you start a war. Scare up the people with visions of mushroom clouds in our cities on national TV. To increase profits, fuel several wars/insurgencies 'round the world. Keep the war corporation crony plates spinning. Scare all nations with suicide bombings here, there, and everywhere. Scare up the oil-rich Arabs with rumors of terrorists so that they will pay through the nose for intelligence from private sources to keep their oil refineries safe. Hire a bunch of former intelligence officers from the CIA who know how to steal data and where it is and who has control of it. Then you play the terrorists against the nations who fear them and are willing to pay for "protection" as in the days of Al Capone. Business is always good, and you always win. If a certain area is not paying "protection" bucks what do you do? Well what did Al Capone do? Why, a grocery just blew itself up or a hardware store burned down. Back then, businesses protected themselves by using Al Capone's protection services when the terrorist was also Al Capone. He played a double roll and got to double dip. Great work if you can get it. Â

So enter the 21st Century, and bingo, instantly, "protection" (a lucrative offshoot of war against terrorists) is big bidness, worldwide. Instead of merchants in Chicago, it's become nations of the world who are the customers. They got more money. And they pay through the nose for protection, especially the countries with oil. No wonder Bernie Kerick, ex police chief of NYC and Giuliani's partner, got 10 million dollars in stock warrants from selling tazers to city and state governments all over the world. Big business, protection. It rules. How did Eisenhower foretell such a danger in our government getting into bed with the war corporation contractors? Chilling.

Then came Blackwater, a finely-tuned, world-class intelligence/protection organization, offering protection, spreading its tentacles to the four corners of the earth. Wouldn't it make a great spy novel where the terrorists and the heads of state and protection companies were like the wrestling game? You know, where each opponent conspires to give the crowd an emotional reaction where one wins and the other loses for a while, and then the tables turn suddenly and the other wins? And the wrestlers go out together for drinks afterwards? I can just hear the dialogue where a Milo Minderbinder-type character sets the terrorists against a country, say Albania, shooting up the countryside, killing, looting as Milo waits for the phone to ring in his US secret underground corporate headquarters of a company named, say, Muddywater. It rings. It's the president of Albania, begging for Muddywater protection services at any cost. Just so happens that Milo is top-heavy in secret operatives in Rome at the time (what a coincidence to be so close to Albania; give those terrorist bombers who scared up the Albanians a bonus). So the Muddywater operatives fly their hi-tech 'copters over to Albania and do their thing, the terrorists recede from their Albania rampage, Milo is paid a few hundred million Euro dollars (subtle, ain't it?), and everybody wins. The phone rings again. Milo tells his aide that the King of Saudi reports bombings just miles from the palace. "What do we have to offer them that's close by? Nothing? Then deploy from North Carolina at twice the rate, etc. They can stand it." You get the dialogue. So then the aide says they are already committed to Lebanon for the coming quarter. Milo says to drop Lebanon like a shoe because (drum roll) "Who got de money? And who don't?" The aide smiles, knowingly.  "But hire some more CIA rejects off the street and we will do Lebanon, too, just tell them we might be a few days late. Who else they gonna call?"  Milo shuffles some papers on his desk. "New subject." he says to his aide. "We need some pesos. Who you got in Mexico? Just some poor rebels who think they got a cause, right? Send some of our men down with some C4. Blow up a pyramid or two, you know the old ones, the Mayan ruins. Make it Chichen Itza, the big pyramid. Nobody's been scared up enough in Yucatan for too long.......tourists think it's a safe haven there, and we will show them different. The government of Mexico gets a billion dollars a day from tourists. Chichen Itza, the big one. Yeah. Have them take out a cenote or two, you know, where the tourists swim and play while they're there. That will get the phones ringing."Â

Wow. Think of the all them protection bucks. Think of the enormity of such a world scheme. And if we just remember Rumsfeld's "snow" memos and "Keep the terror alert elevated." how can we lose?

http://tpjmagazine.us/walker15

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Rove mocked spending on flu preparedness

By Raw Story

Bush's Brain doesn't appear to be quite so prescient in the face of a potential global flu epidemic.

Writing in a column in the Wall Street Journal in February, Rove attacked Democrats for what he dubbed as reckless spending — stimulus money being doled out to industries "that added jobs last year."

Among them? Education and healthcare.

What nefarious programs were Democrats trying to insert? Among other things, Rove cited $900 million for "pandemic flu preparations."

"There's also $4 billion for health programs like obesity control and smoking cessation, $2 billion for the National Institutes of Health, $462 million for the Centers for Disease Control, and $900 million for pandemic flu preparations," Rove wrote.

"It is not surprising that the stimulus package is laden with new spending programs," the former Deputy White House chief of staff continued. "Much of it is spending Democrats couldn't get approved in the normal course of affairs… Putting budgets of political allies above the budgets of struggling families is apparently the new Democratic trickle-down economics."

The $900 million Rove rebuked was killed when House and Senate negotiators met to iron out differences of the stimulus package between the two chambers. The Senate nixed the provision, while the House had voted for it.

http://rawstory.com/08/blog/2009/04/27/rove-mocked-spending-on-flu-preparedness/

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Flashback

Official proclamation, June 2003:

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
June 26, 2003

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT

United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

Today, on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States declares its strong solidarity with torture victims across the world. Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. We are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law.

Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit. Beating, burning, rape, and electric shock are some of the grisly tools such regimes use to terrorize their own citizens. These despicable crimes cannot be tolerated by a world committed to justice....

The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy. I further urge governments to join America and others in supporting torture victims' treatment centers, contributing to the UN Fund for the Victims of Torture, and supporting the efforts of non-governmental organizations to end torture and assist its victims.

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/04/22/memories.aspx

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U.S. Soldier Killed Herself -- After Refusing to Take Part in Torture

by Greg Mitchell

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With each new revelation on U.S. torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gitmo (and who, knows, probably elsewhere), I am reminded of the chilling story of Alyssa Peterson, who I have written about numerous times in the past three years but now with especially sad relevance. Appalled when ordered to take part in interrogations that, no doubt, involved what we would call torture, she refused, then killed herself a few days later, in September 2003.

Of course, we now know from the torture memos and the U.S. Senate committee probe and various new press reports, that the "Gitmo-izing" of Iraq was happening just at the time Alyssa got swept up in it.

Alyssa Peterson was one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq. A cover-up, naturally, followed.

Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Ariz., native, served with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a "non-hostile weapons discharge."

A "non-hostile weapons discharge" leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows. The Arizona Republic, three days after her death, reported that Army officials "said that a number of possible scenarios are being considered, including Peterson's own weapon discharging, the weapon of another soldier discharging, or the accidental shooting of Peterson by an Iraqi civilian." And that might have ended it right there.

But in this case, a longtime radio and newspaper reporter named Kevin Elston, not satisfied with the public story, decided to probe deeper in 2005, "just on a hunch," he told me in late 2006 (there's a chapter about it in my book on Iraq and the media, So Wrong for So Long). He made "hundreds of phone calls" to the military and couldn't get anywhere, so he filed a Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] request. When the documents of the official investigation of her death arrived, they contained bombshell revelations. Here's what the Flagstaff public radio station, KNAU, where Elston worked, reported:

"Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed."

The official probe of her death would later note that earlier she had been "reprimanded" for showing "empathy" for the prisoners. One of the most moving parts of the report, in fact, is this: "She said that she did not know how to be two people; she ... could not be one person in the cage and another outside the wire."

She was then assigned to the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards, and sent to suicide prevention training. "But on the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle," the documents disclose.

The official report revealed that a notebook she had written in was found next to her body, but blacked out its contents.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/us-soldier-killed-herself_b_190517.html

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Moral Relativism

— By Kevin Drum

When the subject has anything to do with sex, the right in America is the party of moral absolutes. We know what's right, we know what's wrong, and even if there's a price to pay we can't shirk our responsibility to set a proper example and do the right thing.

But when the subject is torture, suddenly it's all about carefully weighing the costs and benefits. Having an honest debate about how far we should go to protect ourselves. Understanding the context of what happened. It's just not possible to flatly say that waterboarding and sleep deprivation and stress positions are barbarisms unfit for use by a civilized country. It's much more complex than that.

Funny how that works, isn't it?

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/04/moral-relativism

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Turley: 'God help us' if torture only gets a '9/11 commission'

by David Edwards and Muriel Kane

The recent release of Bush administration torture memos has given rise to calls for prosecution of the Justice Department lawyers who wrote those memos. However, law professor Jonathan Turley believes that this may represent a deliberate attempt to draw attention away from George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the other high Bush administration officials who ordered the torture.

"That's the really strange thing," Turley told MSNBC's David Shuster on Tuesday. "In the last week or so, we've seen an effort to define a potential investigation in terms of the lawyers who wrote these memos. ... A war crime investigation does not look at the people who drove the trains -- they look at the people who told the trains to roll."

"George Bush and Vice President Cheney, the CIA director, the attorney general ... implemented, in full knowledge that it was a war crime, the torture program," Turley emphasized. "The effort to define it in terms of lawyers is something of a Beltway shift. That is, it's setting us up for failure."

According to Turley, Attorney General Eric Holder "needs to appoint a special prosecutor and not limit it as to who committed the alleged war crimes."

"A true war crime investigation would be given to a special prosecutor, who would follow it where it would lead him or her," Turley told Shuster. "And that would most certainly lead him ... or her to the former president or vice president and the people like the CIA director and attorney general who pushed through this program."

"God help us if the only thing we get out of this is a commission modeled on 9/11," Turley commented. "That was a commission that was really made for Washington -- a commission composed of political appointees of both parties that ran interference for those parties -- a commission that insisted at the beginning it would not impose blame on individuals. So it's the ideal Washington commission -- a commission that would investigate without any reprecussions."

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Turley_Torture_investigations_should_look_at_0422.html

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Top legislators knew of interrogations

CIA held dozens of briefings on techniques

By Kara Rowland

The CIA briefed top Democrats and Republicans on the congressional intelligence committees more than 30 times about enhanced interrogation techniques, according to intelligence sources who said the lawmakers tacitly approved the techniques that some Democrats in Congress now say should land Bush administration officials in jail.

Between 2002 and 2006, the top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees "each got complete, benchmark briefings on the program," said one of the intelligence sources who is familiar with the briefings.

"If Congress wanted to kill this program, all it had to do was withhold funding," said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the closed-door briefings.

Those who were briefed included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia and Rep. Jane Harman of California, all Democrats, and Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama and Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, all Republicans.

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/23/top-legislators-knew-of-interrogations/

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Bush's Torture Memo Lawyers Didn't Read the Geneva Convention (or Their Oaths of Office)?

By RS Janes

Seriously – Jay Bybee, Bush's former Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, apparently didn't bother to read the Geneva Convention definitions of torture before giving advice to Bush and Cheney on what constitutes torture? And this guy's still a federal judge?

"Judge [Jay] Bybee's résumé tells us that he has four children and is both a Cubmaster for the Boy Scouts and a youth baseball and basketball coach. He currently occupies a tenured seat on the United States Court of Appeals. As an assistant attorney general, he was the author of the Aug. 1, 2002, memo endorsing in lengthy, prurient detail interrogation 'techniques' like 'facial slap (insult slap)' and 'insects placed in a confinement box.'

"He proposed using 10 such techniques 'in some sort of escalating fashion, culminating with the waterboard, though not necessarily ending with this technique.' Waterboarding, the near-drowning favored by Pol Pot and the Spanish Inquisition, was prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II. But Bybee concluded that it 'does not, in our view, inflict 'severe pain or suffering." "
– Frank Rich, "The Banality of Bush White House Evil," NY Times, April 26, 2009.

From the Geneva Convention:

Part II, Section I, Article 13, "General Protection of Prisoners of War": "Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated. Any unlawful act or omission by the Detaining Power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody is prohibited, and will be regarded as a serious breach of the present Convention." [...]

"Likewise, prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity."

Part III, Section I, Article 17, "Captivity": "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind."
– From the "Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War," adopted August 12, 1949 and signed by the United States on October 21, 1950. Published by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Everything proposed by Bybee and Yoo was illegal under both the Geneva Convention and US torture laws, and they should have known that. So should Bush, Cheney and the others who took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.

http://bartblog.bartcop.com/2009/04/27/bushs-torture-memo-lawyers-didnt-read-the-geneva-convention-or-their-oaths-of-office/

Century Plaza Hotel faces demolition

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The hotel once captured the essence of an American paradise.

By Sam Watters

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To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, who had an office in Century City, here we go again.

In March, this column waved goodbye to the Robinsons-May in Beverly Hills. Up for the count this month is another monument in our dwindling legacy of under-appreciated midcentury modern. It is the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza hotel at 2025 Avenue of the Stars.

Long before Southern California was a land of houses, it was an eden of hotels. The Raymond, the Green, the Mission Inn, the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Ambassador were designed as homes away from home. Owners reasoned that if they cranked up the California fantasy, tourists would never leave, building bungalows on open lots owned by shadow cartels of investors, hoteliers and railroad execs. The formula worked and L.A. grew.

After World War II, undeveloped acres were at a premium as L.A. made room for boomers. Just west of Beverly Hills was the 20th Century Fox studio on land that had once been cowboy star Tom Mix's ranch. TV's rise and the studio system's decline in the late '50s led Fox to sell its back lots to New York developer William Zeckendorf and corporate giant Alcoa. Welton Becket, architect of the Beverly Hilton hotel, supplied the master plan for a city within a city, an idea pioneered by Le Corbusier at Chandigarh in India and Oscar Niemeyer at Brasilia in Brazil.

In 1961, the developers launched their city of the century, a modern residential-business acropolis between Santa Monica and Olympic boulevards. As its "keystone," they built what was then called the Century Plaza Hotel, an ultra luxury home for tourists and businessmen.

Minoru Yamasaki was the hotel's architect. From a childhood in a Seattle slum, he rose in a career that landed him the cover of Time. He rejected the classicism of early modernism for buildings that inspired through shape and decoration.

Century Plaza construction began in '64 and finished in '66. Alcoa supplied its new, gold-anodized aluminum to allow for maximum glass and light. To eliminate the gloomy straight halls of early hotels, Yamasaki swept the Century Plaza in a broad arc across the hilltop at the development's center. To keep the lobby open, he buried 32 shops, restaurants and a ballroom below grade.

Donald A. Robbins, senior designer for manager Western International Hotels, decorated the 800 guest rooms. Each had cutting-edge luxuries: wide sliders that opened onto balconies with an ocean or a mountain view, soundproofed walls, central air and heating, electric blankets, built-in vanities, ice machines, radios in the nightstands, and color television a decade before it reached most American homes.

Out of the box, Century Plaza became a VIP destination, where suntanned valets in Beefeater uniforms greeted the limos of movie stars, moguls and mistresses.

In the L.A. hotel tradition, the Century Plaza drove new business. It increased demand for apartments, office space, restaurants, shopping and entertainment, in and around Century City.

The year construction began on the Century Plaza, Yamasaki presented his plans for New York's World Trade Center.

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http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-lostla25-2009apr25,0,4004631.story

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ZIGGURAT: Dubai Carbon Neutral Pyramid will House 1 Million

by Evelyn Lee

The Mayans and Egyptians constructed incredible feats of architecture able to weather the test of time, but they had no idea their pyramids would inspire the shape of the latest carbon-neutral super-structure to hit Dubai. Dubai-based environmental design firm Timelinks recently released some eye-catching renderings of the gigantic eco pyramid - aptly named Ziggurat - with plans for its official unveiling scheduled for the Cityscape Dubai event which runs October 6-9 of this year. The ginormous pyramid will cover 2.3 square kilometers and will be able to sustain a "community" of up to 1 million.

Timelinks claims that their Ziggurat will be capable of running completely off the grid by utilizing steam, wind, and other natural resources. The tightly knit city will also feature a super efficient public transportation system that runs both horizontally and vertically, and plans are being drawn up to utilize both public and private green spaces for agricultural opportunities.

According to the International Institute for the Urban Environment, the technologies incorporated into the Ziggurat project will make it a viable metropolis, and Timlinks has responded by quickly patenting the design and technology developed for the project. A number of European professors will be on hand at CityScape Dubai to explain how the Ziggurat project can be incorporated into grander plans, meaning that it may not be a one-off structure.

http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/08/25/ziggurat-dubai-carbon-neutral-pyramid-will-house-1-million/

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Stunning Government Billion-Dollar Giveaway to Paper Companies in the Works

Stunning Government Billion-Dollar Giveaway to Paper Companies in the Works

By Christopher Hayes

A tax loophole could let the ten largest paper companies rake in a whopping $8 billion. Where's the outrage?

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Two years in Washington have started to make me feel jaded. I've come to expect that even nobly conceived laws will be manipulated and distorted for private ends. But once in a while I hear a story that gives me the queasy feeling that I'm nowhere near cynical enough. Such is the case with the tale of the paper industry and the alternative-fuel tax credit.

Thanks to an obscure tax provision, the United States government stands to pay out as much as $8 billion this year to the ten largest paper companies. And get this: even though the money comes from a transportation bill whose manifest intent was to reduce dependence on fossil fuel, paper mills are adding diesel fuel to a process that requires none in order to qualify for the tax credit. In other words, we are paying the industry--handsomely--to use more fossil fuel. "Which is," as a Goldman Sachs report archly noted, the "opposite of what lawmakers likely had in mind when the tax credit was established."

The massive tax subsidy has barely been reported in the press, but it's caused a stir in the paper industry, which is struggling to stay profitable in the teeth of the recession. "Everybody's talking about it," paper industry analyst Brian McClay told me. "In the US and elsewhere in the world--in Canada and Brazil and Chile and Europe."

On March 24 International Paper (IP) announced it had received its first check from the IRS for a one-month period this past fall. The total? A whopping $71.6 million. "It's probably close to a billion a year of cash," McClay said. "If you look at the economics of this business, to make that kind of money today you'd have to be on another planet." IP's stock rose 12 per- cent on the news.

The origins of the credit are innocent enough. In 2005 Congress passed, and George W. Bush signed, the $244 billion transportation bill. It included a variety of tax credits for alternative fuels such as ethanol and biomass. But it also included a fifty-cent-a-gallon credit for the use of fuel mixtures that combined "alternative fuel" with a "taxable fuel" such as diesel or gasoline.

Enter the paper industry. Since the 1930s the overwhelming majority of paper mills have employed what's called the kraft process to produce paper. Here's how it works. Wood chips are cooked in a chemical solution to separate the cellulose fibers, which are used to make paper, from the other organic material in wood. The remaining liquid, a sludge containing lignin (the structural glue that binds plant cells together), is called black liquor. Because it's so rich in carbon, black liquor is a good fuel; the kraft process uses the black liquor to produce the heat and energy necessary to transform pulp into paper. It's a neat, efficient process that's cost-effective without any government subsidy.

"Seventy-three percent of the energy we use in our mill system we produce," says Ann Wrobleski, IP's vice president for global government relations. "We feel like we're the original green industry, if you will." (In developed nations, paper is the third-largest industrial greenhouse gas emitter, behind the steel and chemical industries.)

By adding diesel fuel to the black liquor, paper companies produce a mixture that qualifies for the mixed-fuel tax credit, allowing them to burn "black liquor into gold," as a JPMorgan report put it. It's unclear who first came up with the idea--Wrobleski told me it was "outside consultants"--but at some point last fall IP and Verso, another paper company, formerly a part of IP, began adding diesel to its black liquor and applied to the IRS for the credit. (Verso nabbed $29.7 million at just one of its mills in the final quarter of 2008 for its use of mixed fuel.)

Despite the obvious contrivance of the procedure, Wrobleski is unapologetic: "The credit is supposed to encourage the use of green fuel." Sure, I said, but isn't it a bit weird you're now adding diesel fuel to the process in order to take advantage of it? "It is what it is," she said.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/134985/stunning_government_billion-dollar_giveaway_to_paper_companies_in_the_works/?page=entire

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