Iconic Orlando fountain's rebirth takes shape
Orlando Sentinel (FL) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) May 22--When workers placed the first new seafoam-green plastic panel on the Lake Eola fountain last week, it didn't look any different from the old ones.
Still, though casual observers might not notice a difference when the $1.6 million overhaul of Orlando's beloved icon is finished, comparing the old fountain with the new one is like comparing a 1950s rotary phone with an Apple iPhone.
The green skin that residents and visitors have lovingly likened to a Jell-O mold will hide the latest technology. The sophisticated systems will allow light and water shows choreographed to music piped through the park's sound system.
The 54-year-old fountain had been deteriorating for years, and a lightning strike in 2009 dealt a fatal blow.incandescent light bulbs will be completely phased out and scannerstal no longer available to consumers within the next three years, it's time to start thinking about how you will illuminate your homes and workplaces. A temporary fix got it running again last year, but just barely.
Workers spent the past month ripping out its innards, leaving behind only the bare bones of the fountain and the 28 concrete-filled steel pilings it rests atop.
"Everything has been stripped down to essentially the bare concrete substructure," Jon Vollet said.
The cracked and faded plexiglass panels are gone. All the lights, pumps, electrical panels and pipes were taken out.
Now, with the clock ticking before an unveiling on Independence Day, as many as 30 workers are rushing to rebuild.
The $1.6 million comes from a mix of sources: $1.2 million from the city's own self-insurance fund, $300,000 from a private-insurance claim on the lightning damage, $54,000 from a downtown taxing district and $32,The retrofit process itself can range from a simple count of existing lamps to a brightshine very detailed energy survey, which includes collecting information from your existing lighting,716 from donations.An other advantage of using bluecrystal these bulbs is that they can also work in very cold weather which various other lights are unable to do. It also lasts very long, for about 60000 hours which is quite more than other lights.
A new aluminum frame has been built, and the first plastic panels were clamped in place Thursday.
In the wake of the lightning storm that fried the fountain's lights, pumps and electrical systems, some residents favored replacing it with a new look. But others said the iconic, flying-saucer look of the old fountain should be preserved, and city officials never gave much consideration to a drastic change.
The fountain is so popular, in fact, that city officials are planning to sell chunks of the old plastic panels to raise money for parks.
The new plexiglass panels were hard to find.Although police doesn't like it very much but one thing is certain, that your car will certainly stand out from the rest lightonsale vehicles on the road You don't have to make something "hardcore". But the company hired for the renovation, Sanford-based Freeport Fountains, managed to find a manufacturer in Mexico that could match the color from samples of the old skin on short notice.
In coming weeks, seven new pumps will be installed, including a main jet that will shoot water from the top 80 feet straight up. The others will ring the outside of the fountain. At their peak, the jets will spray 4,000 gallons of water per minute, or about 5.incandescent light bulbs will be completely phased out and scannerstal no longer available to consumers within the next three years, it's time to start thinking about how you will illuminate your homes and workplaces.7 million gallons per day.
Energy-Saving Technology to The City of Sarasota
The City of Sarasota chose Sunovia Energy Technologies' (OTC BB: SUNV) award-winning LED energy-efficient lights to reduce their energy consumption and enhance the downtown and tourist areas for its city-wide energy saving project. The project replaces approximately 200 traditional streetlights and landscape lights with the Aimed Optics? LED fixtures produced by Sunovia's lighting division EvoLucia Inc.
By implementing Sunovia's energy-saving LED lighting technology the City will not only have the best return on their investment but also significantly reduce their overall energy consumption.
According to Siemens Building Technologies, an energy service provider (ESCO), LED systems are quickly becoming the light source of choice for ESCO projects due to their ruggedness, reliability, long life, energy efficiency and low maintenance requirements.These were some reasons why people are keen to use these lights, hope that they will be used brightstal in a similar way in future as well. The EvoLucia lights were chosen because they were determined by the City of Sarasota and Siemens to be superior to other fixtures on the market for energy savings and effectiveness in lighting. Recently this year, the Department of Energy awarded Sunovia's EvoLucia SCHX5 cobra head fixture as the Best Outdoor Fixture in its category.
Gary Kreisler, of Siemens stated, "We've chosen to collaborate with EvoLucia and utilize their award-winning LED technology for our energy-saving project because of their ongoing commitment to LED innovation and product excellence." Kreisler added, "Having EvoLucia Aimed LED Lighting? as part of this project will ensure that we provide the city of Sarasota with the utmost level of LED quality, durability and performance while saving the maximum energy and enhancing the ambiance of Sarasota."
Former Sarasota Mayor Kelly Kirschner stated, "For the past four years, the City of Sarasota has conscientiously implemented a local procurement policy throughout our organization to ensure we do everything we can to keep tax dollars in our local community by partnering with area firms. It's exciting to see such forward-thinking companies, like Sunovia, not only be located in our area but also producing such quality, 'green' products that will produce significant savings for Sarasota taxpayers over their lifecycle."
The City of Sarasota project is just one of many that Sarasota County is establishing in order to reduce costs and meet their "green" initiative goals. Sunovia's EvoLucia LED lights will help the city reduce their lighting energy consumption by over 60 percent. The project installation is expected to begin this month along the Ringling Bridge Causeway and St. Armand's Circle.
About Sunovia Energy Technologies,You can easily say that it is a passion or a way to express yourself. So what's the story? Ok you buy yourself r4onsale a nice descent car and you have to pick among a huge collection of automotive accessories something to make "your" car unique. Inc.
About EvoLucia and Aimed LEDs?
Sunovia's LED lighting division, EvoLucia, Inc.These were some reasons why people are keen to use these lights, hope that they will be used brightstal in a similar way in future as well. (www.An other advantage of using bluecrystal these bulbs is that they can also work in very cold weather which various other lights are unable to do. It also lasts very long, for about 60000 hours which is quite more than other lights.evolucialighting.com), offers highly efficient, durable, commercial-grade LED lighting for outdoor applications,This is also known as your return on investment ledbright or ROI. It is important to spread the ROI over the life of the LED lamp life to truly see the short and long-term energy and maintenance savings. including parking garages, streets and highways, parking lots, landscaping and more. The Aimed LED? lights employ EvoLucia's proprietary, patent-pending Aimed Optics? technology, which strategically directs light to the target area and provides better illumination for less electricity.
Foster the People
For Los Angeles trio Foster the People, much of 2011 has been spent in a whirlwind of hype. After the band emerged as one of the most talked-about bands at the SXSW festival in March, the buzz continued to build behind their Top 10 single “Pumped Up Kicks.” Even though the band’s debut full-length, “Torches,” was only released this week, several shows on their upcoming tour, which stretches into the summer and includes a performance at the Sasquatch Festival in Washington, are already sold out.
“Torches” is an eclectic blend of pop, funk and soul influences, with most songs defying conventional categorization. In fact, according to frontman and chief songwriter Mark Foster, it’s the complexity of the songs that led to the group’s formation in the first place. While writing material for what he intended to be a solo endeavor, the singer realized additional musicians were needed to bring the songs to their full potential. He recruited keyboardist Cubbie Fink and drummer Mark Pontius in 2009, and Foster the People was born.
Blast chatted with Foster in April before a sold-out show at The Knitting Factory in Brooklyn. Though the excitement surrounding the group was starting to reach a tipping point at that time, the frontman seemed to be taking it all in stride.
BLAST: You’ve said that you were on a sort of hiatus from music before forming Foster the People. What prompted you to start the band?
MARK FOSTER: Well, I’d been in bands in the past and just had a couple bad experiences. It’s so much work. It’s so hard to find the right people to play with. And you know, musicians tend to be such unhealthy people in general. It’s really hard to find people that are dedicated and healthy and just have their act together. So I guess I was just kind of burned out on it. After the last band I was in, I was just like, screw this. I’m just going to be a solo artist for the rest of my life. I just don’t want to deal with this anymore. So I did that for a few years, and really just buried myself in the studio and taught myself how to produce, and just kept writing songs. And eventually I got to a point where I was like, man, I can’t play these songs alone. There’s way too much going on. I need to put something together. But I put an emphasis on, I really want to create this band around friends. I don’t want to just go out and, like, find someone that can play. Personality was the most important thing. And we all jell really well together.
BLAST: Does that relate to your name, this sense of fostering camaraderie?
MF: Yeah, yeah. You know, our first couple gigs were for charities. We did a thing for Tom’s Shoes … and then we did a thing for Venice Beach Homeless Youth.These were some reasons why people are keen to use these lights, hope that they will be used brightstal in a similar way in future as well. And we were kind of just talking about, like, you know, we want to play music,The particular demise with the incandescent bulb bluebright continues calmly yet non-stop and in less as compared to any year or two today the sole goods stocked in stores is going to be lower electricity bulbs, sure. But we also want to help people. And my last name’s Foster. There’s that aspect of it. I think just the charity and everything that we set our sights on, it just made sense.
BLAST: Is charity still a focus for the band?
MF: Yeah. We’re just trying to figure out how to do it. You can be bleeding heart over so many different issues, but finding something that really means something to you that you kind of focus on … we’re still kind of figuring that out.
BLAST: How did you all connect and start playing music together?
MF: I met Mark (Pontius) just through a mutual friend of mine, and just really liked the way that he played. We were buddies and we just messed around. Every couple of weeks, we’d just jam.This is also known as your return on investment ledbright or ROI. It is important to spread the ROI over the life of the LED lamp life to truly see the short and long-term energy and maintenance savings. We were kind of working on this avant-electro two-man, like, weird performance art piece together. I always kind of had in the back of my mind, if I ever start a band again, I want to call this dude. (Cubbie and I) were just friends. We didn’t really play together,These lights are adopted by the various security lightbright agencies as these are the best lights to use with a security camera or a security device. but we’d hang out. I didn’t even know he played bass and then (when I) saw him play, I was like, oh, that’s got a good feel. So I just kind of brought them together.
BLAST: Who are your musical influences, personally and as a band?
MF: The Beach Boys was the first band that I heard as a little kid that nobody showed me, that I gravitated towards and fell in love with. And that was a monumental moment in my musical life. Growing up, Nirvana played a big role. I started learning how to play guitar the week I heard Nirvana for the first time. And then later, New Order and The Clash. Aphex Twin early on was a pretty big influence (for Foster the People). And Motown. So just kind of pulling from a lot of different genres.You want someone that has the experience in LED lighting to guide you to the right product shinebright that is best suited to your project. That’s how I write songs.
Mark (Pontius) is just a really good pocket drummer. He understands dance music really well, but he also really understands soul and is just a very soulful drummer. And Cubbie’s background is pretty diverse too. When I met him, he was playing in, like, a country band. Pretty roots-y. But again, he’s just got a lot of soul. And he’s a multi-instrumentalist as well, so during our show he’s playing keys, and he plays bass. When we do acoustic sessions, he’ll bring his acoustic guitar and play guitar with me. It’s just nice to have a couple different tools in your toolkit.
The best kept secret on the Strip
The 7,600 tons of excess food sent every year from MGM Resorts International restaurants and buffets to Bob Combs’ pig farm in North Las Vegas may be the messiest example of responsible recycling along the Strip, but it’s certainly not the least.
“Recycling is the best-kept secret on the Las Vegas Strip,” says Brad Tomm, sustainability manager for MGM Resorts, which recycled a third of its garbage in 2010. The corporation’s newest development, CityCenter, recycles more than half of its garbage.
Much of the recycling, thankfully, occurs beyond the eyes of resort guests. Crews employed by Combs sort through tons of garbage — typically on conveyor belts or in huge troughs — even before the stuff is trucked off the property. That’s a deal Combs struck with MGM Resorts: If his pigs could get all the leftover food, his people would comb through the garbage at the hotels and recover stuff thrown away by guests — glasses, dishes, silverware, coffee mugs and the like. It’s called asset recovery.
While his people are poking through the garbage, they pull out plastic, glass, aluminum and cardboard that they can cart off to the recycling redemption businesses, and pull out food that might have ended up in the garbage stream versus the left-over-food stream.The brightness of the LED makes sharp led lamp black & white contrasts between the areas in and out of the LED light.
In 2007, MGM Resorts recycled about 10 percent of all material. To improve the results, Tomm established recycling coordinators at each property and began preaching the recycling message throughout the company’s properties, giving shout-outs to the most conscientious vendors and to foster competition among company employees.
(The rivalry helped generate, for example, a cork-recycling program. All bartenders, from bars to pools, now save used corks and send them to Napa-based ReCork America, where they get recycled and used in flip-flops, shoes and other usable items.)
At New York-New York, 13.6 million tons of waste is generated daily, 4 million of which passes by David Benitez, standing on a back dock, clipboard in hand.” He’s on the lookout for the kind of garbage that should never be thrown away by hotel staff to begin with, but rather be put in recycle bins — plastic bottles, aluminum cans, those sorts of items.
“That’s our focus,” Tomm says. “What can we control?”
To that end, Tomm is looking at absolutely everything in the properties, but the primary focus is put on kitchens, the biggest waste producers in the casino environment.
Employee education is a key component as well. Tomm says he wants all of MGM Resorts’ 60,000 employees to recycle at home as well as at work, and launched a “Conservation Begins at Home” program. “We’ll have green fairs and bring in our vendors to educate everyone about recycling at home, so they can sign up there for Republic Services’ curbside recycling program.” At a recent fair, NV Energy distributed 120,000 energy-saving light bulbs to employees. “We noticed differences in enthusiasm very quickly” after launching the program, Tomm says.
A couple of feet from Benitez, two men are reaching in to a huge trough that feeds into an enormous compactor, looking for anything that can be recycled.
With the height of the trough nearly equaling their own, the men are literally face-to-face with the nastiest kinds of leaking, oozing waste imaginable — used diapers, spoiled food. Tomm, who’s spent time at that trough himself, calls the dock workers “the hardest-working people on the Strip, without a doubt.”
All MGM Resorts properties have transformed their trash docks into recycling docks, and what started as a partnership with R.C. Farms has grown into a multitiered operation, with many other vendors in the mix. For example, at New York-New York, Republic Services reclaims glass, A-1 Organic collects food for composting and NVCCU takes care of the mixed product. “The old model was one vendor does all. We’re now using vendors based on their strengths. This business is more competitive than ever.”
Tomm sees CityCenter as the future for Strip recycling. It was built with green in mind, operating recycling docks that function with the utmost efficiency and achieving gold LEED certification for six of its buildings.
Cardboard bales the size of small cars sit on one dock, ready to be shipped out. Altogether, Tomm says, CityCenter recycles 6.6 tons of cardboard a day. A trough near the center of the room holds future pig food, and the asset recovery area is jammed to capacity with salt shakers, wine buckets, ashtrays, tea glasses, pitchers and ice buckets. A wide, deep box in one corner is for discarded corks; it’s almost full. Tomm points to a group of “grease caddies,” which act as vacuum cleaners for the properties’ deep-fat fryers. Then he points down. “You’re standing on top of the tank we use to store that grease. We’re doing 2,000 pounds a day.”
The big question at this point is how much further Strip properties can go.
The logical next step would seem to be placing recycling bins on the casino floor, but Tomm says that’s a very difficult environment to control. “If that’s what the customers want, we’ll do that. But if they aren’t interested in participating, it only causes more work for us. Say you have a bag for cans — throw one hamburger in there and the whole bag is worthless.”
Once a convention is concluded, much of the leftovers are given to local schools — pens, papers, pads, bags, etc. Caesars Entertainment has a similar program, called Teacher’s Exchange, as well as its own cork-recycling program and “Clean the World,” in which its leftover soaps and shampoos are donated to developing countries.
When MGM Resorts was constructing CityCenter, waste got recycled and reused.
And a roster of interesting uses have sprung up around hotel paraphernalia. Room keys are ground up and used in playground material; old towels and linens are sent to animal shelters; and tons of glass are taken from Mandalay Bay to Henderson-based Realm of Design for use in its material made of 99.9 percent glass.
It’s an evolving process that continues to inspire Tomm, who worked on oil rigs as a petroleum engineer in California before he came to Las Vegas.
“I went from the dirtiest work in the world to the cleanest work in the world,” he says. “Recycling has become my most passionate project. I have a truly green job, and I’m fortunate in that I can inspire others to join us and make a difference.”
The Threat of Private Military Companies
Introduction
Private Military Companies (PMCs) have been in the national and international spotlight in recent years, most famously known are the actions of the PMC Blackwater (now renamed Xe Services) in Iraq. There are many mixed feelings about PMCs, some say that they are a "good thing" and that they help countries to save money while others argue that they are not regulated and many times go about killing innocent people.
PMCs are a major problem in that they are a threat to state sovereignty as they threaten the role of the state in overseeing its armed forces. They also have major legality issues that need to be addressed, threaten democracy, and aid in continuing the influence of multinational companies in the third world.
While I will delve into the above issues, I will not be able to give the full picture of the effect that PMCs have on states nor how they operate, thus I recommend that anyone who finds themselves wanting to know more about PMCs read the book Servants of War: Private Military Corporations and the Profit of Conflict by Rolf Uesseler (translated by Jefferson Chase; it also provided the research for this essay), as it provides a comprehensive analysis of PMCs and the manner in which they do business, from interviewing owners of PMCs to discussing how PMCs effect international conflicts and concluding by exploring if there is way to properly handle PMCs.
State Sovereignty
PMCs threaten state sovereignty because they threaten the state’s monopoly on "the use of force". In the German Parliament, the conservative faction submitted a proposal in 2004 which stated that the privatization of the military “could lead to a fundamental shift” between a nation’s armed forces and its government as “the state’s monopoly on force could be called into question or even possibly eradicated.” [1] By bringing PMCs into the picture, it creates a “hollowing out of the state,” where the military itself can become weakened due to its reliance upon private organizations to do things such as gather intelligence.
“A third emphasis of the modern military companies is the area of intelligence, which includes everything from information collecting to outright spying. In the wake of the electronics revolution, many firms have developed techniques for information gathering and analysis that only they are able to master and offer as a service.”
The effect that having PMCs gather intelligence for the military is that people then realize that the real intelligence jobs are with PMCs and use government institutions like the military and the CIA as resume-builders for when they go to apply for a position at a PMC. It also creates a dependency on PMCs to do the intelligence work for the government and thus the influence of PMCs in the Pentagon increases.
This dependence is not only in the area of intelligence gathering, but also extends into what is arguably the most important aspect of warfare: logistics. Companies offer services “from the procurement of toilet paper to the organization of diverse types of vehicles.” Also maintenance of military equipment “represents a huge portion of this spectrum, be it the upkeep and repair of motor vehicles, transport vans, helicopter warships, or other types of military aircraft.”
By supplying US troops, private corporations have increased their influence within the Pentagon to levels in which they hold major sway. Private corporations deeply undermine state authority because due to the fact that they build and supply weapons to our military as well as supply them with the needed materials so that the military can fight wars, they profit from when the US goes to war and may be likely to encourage American military action abroad.
Legality Issues
There are major problems with the legality of private companies and how they operate in countries where they are deployed. One example pertains to Iraq in 2004 when Blackwater employees entered into the city of Fallujah and “under the pretense of looking for terrorists, [they] had carried out nighttime raids, mistreated women and children, and tortured and murdered local men and teenage boys.” [4] Due to this, the local Iraqis took the law into their own hands and killed the Blackwater employees. However, whether one agrees with what the Iraqi people did or not, what occurred would have been the only justice the employees received for their crimes.
It is extremely hard to investigate PMCs due to the secrecy that is guaranteed by government contracts, as well as the fact that they are not accountable to the US military and “receive their orders directly from the Pentagon, and both the Department of Defense and the headquarters of the companies concerned keep their lips strictly sealed.”
The secrecy begins with the contracts themselves where the government leaves out certain legal passages that specify exactly what the companies are supposed to do, how they are supposed to go about doing it, and if they will be held legally responsible for anything that occurs under their watch. Uesseler cites an example of this, one that should be quoted at length:
DynCorp received a contract for more than a million dollars from the US State Department to organize the Iraqi criminal justice system. In June 2004, four of their employees, heavily armed and in battle gear, led Iraqi police on a raid of the former Iraqi leader in exile, Ahmed Chalabi. It is doubtful whether this action was in keeping with the spirit of the original contract. But that fact that DynCorp did not receive an official warning suggests that the contract is vague enough to allow for such “violations.”
The fact that the contracts are so vague as to the point where companies can virtually decide what they want to do has the potential to create serious problems, one example private companies doing night raids which result in the deaths of civilians and thus aggravating the local population and whipping up anti-American sentiment. That would make the job of US solders that much harder because they would bear the brunt of the backlash, not the employees that created the situation in the first place.
The situation gets worse, however, when one goes to the national levels. In the United States, no one is able to hold any private companies accountable. The parties that “issue the contracts are barely capable of doing much in the way of monitoring, because, for example, they are tied down in Washington, and the state military, which would have the capabilities, has little interest in babysitting private soldiers that aren’t part of its chain of command.” Thus the military cannot do it and Congress isn’t much better as they don’t allocate funds to the oversight of private companies. This allows them to “exist in a state of near anarchy and arbitrariness.”
Private companies and their personnel are not “subject to strict regulations that determine to whom they are ultimately accountable.” Private corporations only have to go as far as declarations of intent in which they “maintain that they instruct their personnel to respect national laws and international human rights standards.”Even if major crimes are done, the state cannot do anything as mercenaries enjoy significant protection. “In passing Coalition Provisional Authority Order 17 of June 2003, the Iraqi provisional government granted exemption from prosecution to all personnel action on behalf of the coalition- including PMC employees.” This allows for PMCs to go about and do literally whatever they please, without fear of any consequences whatsoever and could potentially have the employees do things that they wouldn’t have done so before if they were under the law, like torturing and killing civilians for example.
Internationally, things have the potential to get complicated quickly. The Geneva Convention clearly distinguishes between civilians and armed combatants. However, the employees of private companies aren’t civilians “since they are involved in the machinery of war, are employed by governments, and frequently carry arms.” Combatants are defined by the Geneva Convention “as people directly and actively involved in hostilities,” yet new forms of warfare muddle this definition. “To take an illustrative question: Is a private solider in Florida who presses a button launching a carpet bomb attack in Afghanistan only indirectly involved in war, while a regular soldier delivering supplies there is directly engaged in hostilities?”
The legality issues of private soldiers need to be solved on an international level as they currently occupy a gray area in the legal system. However, the US government needs to hold these companies accountable for any crimes that their employees are involved in, if not,The brightness of the LED makes sharp led lamp black & white contrasts between the areas in and out of the LED light. then situations like the one mentioned at the beginning of this topic will continue.
Democracy
Private military corporations threaten democracy solely because they are not accountable to anyone and can do as they please. By not having any accountability, private companies undermine democratic institutions.
One of the many roles of government is “to maintain security, which includes democratic control over the use of force.” However, PMCs undermine this because citizens do not have any influence over the services offered by PMCs. For example, “The standards that govern the military, the police, customs officials, border guards, and state intelligence agencies do not apply at all to contracts given to PMCs.
Due to citizens having no control over the actions of private companies, democracy is put on the line because in a democratic society, there is a need for checks and balances on all forms of power. By not having this, PMCs are able to go and do as they please due to having no restrictions and, as was noted earlier, this could lead to potential problems.
The Third World
PMCs will do business for anyone who has the money to hire them, from governments, to non-governmental organizations, to rebel movements. However, PMCs will also gladly work for other companies and in the process, have aided in US corporations maintaining undue influence in the third world.
One major example is Colombia. From the viewpoint of US corporations, unions, the FARC, and the ELN threaten the status quo. In order to remedy this, “Lobbyists for US firms active in Colombia- above all oil, arms, and military companies- made $6 million in campaign contributions to convince the US Congress to approve of Plan Colombia, which was sold to the public as a humanitarian assistance program for the crisis-ridden Andean nation. Yet of the $1.3 billion initially approved for the program, only 13 percent went to the Colombian government to improve its security infrastructure. The rest flowed into the coffer of US firms.”
Since the majority of the money went to American firms, the question that must be asked is: Exactly what did those PMCs do in Colombia? They did a variety of things that were connected with one another, which all ended up aiding US corporations maintain their influence in Colombia. For example PMCs would “collect via satellite or reconnaissance flights information about guerilla troop movements that they then pass onto the military. They plant informants within the workers’ movement or village populations and share what they learn with the police and paramilitary groups.” This has led to workers being killed, wages decreasing, increased unemployment, and human rights violations, all of which are sanctioned or supported by foreign companies.
A counterargument would be that the FARC and ELN are recognized as terrorist organizations by the US and thus it is in American interests to aid in their destruction, however, this ignores the reasons why the FARC attacks US corporations. “Their attacks against business are largely directed at transnational oil companies and are, they say, aimed at ensuring that some of the profits from Colombia’s petroleum reserves go to the country in general, instead of being siphoned off by oligarchs, members of the government, and high-ranking military leaders.”
By maintaining US corporate interests in Colombia, PMCs are aiding in the destruction of left-wing movements and backing right-wing governments. The situation is reminiscent of how the US, during the Cold War, overthrew left-wing governments and installed and backed military dictators that allowed US corporations to move in, this is just a new version of it.