Jeff Milner

• Mercenaries guard homes of the rich in New Orleans
• The Day David Flores Met A Mercenary
• Blackwater USA Official Site
• Overkill: Feared Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans
• Conspiracy Theory: Has The Bush cartel Ordered FEMA and/or Blackwater Mercenaries to Destroy Evidence of Katrina Casualties?

Hong Kong Disneyland officially opens today.

The new theme park had a trial opening on Sunday September 4th, and discovered that filling it to near capacity was not a good idea. At 311 acres Hong Kong Disneyland is less than half the size of the original Disneyland in California. A spokesman for the company admitted that the more than 29,000 visitors to the theme park had suffered when it was almost filled to its daily capacity of 30,000 during the charity trial run a week ago, ahead of its grand opening today.

Capacity problems aside, getting the park into the communist country has not been easy. There have been many problems along the way and the media loves to find fault in any company with such a reputation as Disney’s.

Shark Fin Soup on the wedding banquet menu was criticized for being wasteful and cruel to sharks by animal rights activists. The activists complain that shark’s fins are harvested inhumanely by fishermen who brutally hack the fin from sharks and toss the bodies back into the sea to die, a practice known as “finning.” Shark Fin Soup is a Chinese delicacy and is adored by the masses, so making a balance between cultural sensitivities and conservation can be tricky. In the end, the company said that it had made the decision to remove the controversial item from its menu because it was “not able to identify an environmentally sustainable fishing source” that could make sure the fins used for the soup were not the product of large-scale butchering of sharks in open seas.

The government of China has also had its share of rebuke for giving up too much in its negotiations with Disney. People have expressed concern over the high-profile union between two major forces in their lives: big business and government. With the government investing over $3 billion US another concern is over Disney opening an additional theme park, this time in mainland China, within only a few years – which would damage profits. Disney has announced that a new park in Shanghai could be under construction as early as 2010 if talks go smoothly.

Critics denounced Disney for euthanizing dozens of stray dogs that had lived in the area during construction. Around 40 dogs, some of which were used as unofficial guard dogs by construction workers, are believed to have been given lethal injections after being caught by government dog catchers.

The park has also been criticized for its fireworks shows adding smog to an already polluted environment.

A group of activists put a large stuffed Mickey Mouse in a cage at the entrance to the Hong Kong Disneyland on Sunday in a symbolic protest against labour exploitation.

But despite all the criticisms and logistical problems, Hong Kong Disneyland opens today and, for this Disney fan, it’s hard not to feel the magic.

More shocking news about the situation in New Orleans. Jacob Appelbaum and Joel Johnson are in the New Orleans area, helping with communications reconnect efforts and documenting what they witness. Jacob writes:

It’s a strange future we’re living in and have no doubt about it, we’re living in the future. It’s too bad that we’re living in that other future, the dystopian one. The one with terrorists, murderers, corruption at the highest government levels, global wars and a world with an environment being destroyed by serious pollution. A world where people are now literately drowning in it.

I haven’t mentioned much about the Hurricane, but I’ve found something that I wanted to share. An eyewitness account of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Well it was bound to happen, and now it has. I woke up this morning at about 6am with a terrible sore throat and nobody to take care of me. I just hope it doesn’t turn into a full fledged cold / flu / pneumonia.

New research correlating video game experience with proficiency in the operating room indicates that those who have played video games in the past were significantly faster and, more importantly, created fewer errors than people who had no previous video game experience. And my Dad always told me video games were a waste of time. (Of course I’m not a doctor but maybe if I hadn’t spent so much time playing video games…)

Researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology have created a credit card-size battery that runs on urine as a disposable power source for medical test kits. Urine is rich in ions and ions are what makes electricity electric – or something like that.

Now if we could only hook it up to our cars…

Petro points will have to wait. I received the following email from a friend, and while Snopes says “not buying gas” won’t help the problem because a one to three day boycott of gasoline is too short a period to make a difference, maybe there is enough of a spin on this method that it might work.

Instead of forwarding this to 10 people, I’m posting it on the blog so that the 500 or so people that come here daily (assuming some of you are gas purchasing Canadians) will get the message.

It is rumoured that we are going to hit close to a $1.42 a litre by the winter. Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united action. Someone offered this good idea. This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the “don’t-buy-gas” on a certain day campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn’t continue to hurt ourselves by refusing to buy gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, this is a plan that can really work. Please read it and join.

We all know that we’re being controlled by the oil companies. Does everyone remember how they drove up the prices and got the gas prices to where they wanted them, claiming there was a shortage of oil. Well, there isn’t any shortage now, and the oil is more abundant than it was 35 years ago when the price of a gallon of gas was 29 cents!!!

Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of litre of gas is CHEAP at $0.78 – $0.85, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace… not sellers.

With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. How? Since we all rely on our cars we can’t just stop buying gas. But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.

Here’s the idea:

PAY ATTENTION HERE

For the rest of this year, DON’T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), PETRO-CANADA & SHELL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of PETRO-CANADA and SHELL buyers. It’s really simple to do! Now, don’t wimp out on me at this point…keep reading and I’ll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

I am sending this note to at least thirty people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300), and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)…and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers! If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That’s all. How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 30 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!! I’ll bet you I didn’t think you and I had that much potential, did you! Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on.

PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $0.64 OR LESS RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK!!!!!!

But it won’t reach 30 million Canadians, there aren’t even that many Canadians with Internet access, nor that many that actually buy gas. I guess the point is to just tell as many people as possible.

Update: Well I’ve decided it won’t work. Read about it in the comments.