I missed it yesterday, but it looks as though the powers-that-be here in Mississippi really want that biological facility at Flora. Are they that dumb and irresponsible? Sadly, it appears so.

Read the article.

The JP Blog has commented before on the government's plans to move the Plum Island hoof-and-mouth disease facility to a location on the mainland and renaming it the National Bio-and-Agro-Defense Facility that will also study diseases that can be transferred from animals to humans.

Flora is on the short list for the laboratory, along with Athens, Ga., Manhattan, Kan., Butner, N.C., and San Antonio.

USA Today recently ran an article on the issue in which our own representative Chip Pickering is quoted as strongly supporting the move to Flora.

Read the article and ask yourself whether or not you would like to live anywhere close to a facility that works not only with hoof-and-mouth disease, but also with diseases that can infect human beings.

Julie Mabus is the founder and CEO of Sudan Reconstruction. The JP interviewed her several weeks ago and will be posting the interview in a series of podcasts, of which this is the first.


Podcast

When the government in power seem to be doing some unbelievably irrational and stupid things, don't commit the deadly error of concluding that the rulers are stupid and irrational. They appear to be stupid only because you don't understand the rulebook.

Take the war in Iraq, for instance. Look who is winning and who is losing. The winners: Exxon, Haliburton, KBR, Blackwater, BP, Shell, etc.

The losers: first, you, my friend, unless you work for one of the aforesaid winners. A gas station is nothing more than a device to transfer your money to the coffers of the aforesaid winners. Of course the IRS also transfers quite a bit of your money into the coffers of the winners as the government pays them obscene amounts of money for the war

The rest:

• your sons and daughters serving in Iraq;
• 
  
• the standing of the United States as a bastion of freedom, justice and prosperity;
• 
  
• the Iraqis; and
• 
  
• the less affuent of the world who are starving because the price of food staples has gone through the ceiling.
• 
  

Enter Greg Palast, reporter, disturber of the noisy and violent peace, who cracks open the rule book of the global energy business and its lackey, the Bush Administration, and shows us that there is a method in the Bushite madness. Here is the beginning of his latest column on TomPaine.com/OurFuture.org:

I can’t make this up:

In a hotel room in Brussels, the chief executives of the world’s top oil companies unrolled a huge map of the Middle East, drew a fat, red line around Iraq and signed their names to it.

The map, the red line, the secret signatures. It explains this war. It explains this week’s rocketing of the price of oil to $134 a barrel.

It happened on July 31, 1928, but the bill came due now.

Barack Obama knows this. Or, just as important, those crafting his policies seem to know this. Same for Hillary Clinton’s team. There could be no more vital difference between the Republican and Democratic candidacies. And you won’t learn a thing about it on the news from the Fox-holes.

In short, the energy barons of the world have, since 1928, been doing everything in their considerable power to keep Iraq's oil off the market.

Palast has been writing about this for years. Has it gotten any traction? Don't be silly.

Read the column. Is there any other reasonable explanation for U. S. Policy towards Iraq since 1928? As Sherlock Holmes remarked, “When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

So what these barons are doing is not stupid. It's a lot worse; it is insane. It will, if not stopped, lead to our impoverishment and eventually our destruction. Even the wealthy and powerful will not be able to avoid the consequences of what they are doing.