You know what, as an outsider, I think the real problem is that the US has completely lost sight of what "Left wing" and "Right wing" or "Liberal" and "Conservative" mean. Hell, you're applying political labels to a non-political sporting event: how is that rational?
It's politics. And I suppose sports has no political or social connotation in the rest of the world. The same people play soccer and race yachts, right?
Step outside the echo chamber and consider it from a technical viewpoint instead of a political one. You'll see the corners that were cut then, especially all the extra things at Fukushima that relied on a supply of cooling water (eg. the removed fuel rods).
One can always burn more money. What's the cost/benefits justification that makes that better than "cutting corners"?
Fukashima was due to TEPCO cheaping out and not reinforcing the sea wall WHEN IT'S OWN GEOLOGISTS SUGGESTED THEY DO SO GIVEN THE HISTORY OF FAULT LINES AND TSUNAMI PATTERNS IN THE AREA.
Give the year. When did these geologists make this "suggestion"? I heard it was around 2008 or 2009. The plant was scheduled to be shut down in 2011. Why should they build a higher sea wall when the plant isn't operating that long? You are making this allegation in ignorance of what was going on.
And made worse by a string of stupid errors whose underlying theme was 'don't shut the systems down, we can fix them, if you really shut down fast we won't be able to restart easily'.
As the other replier noted, the reactors scrammed immediately. And it didn't take long after the accident started for them to decide to pour borated water and sea water in there as fast as possible to cool various reactors. At that point, they had written off those reactors.
Yes, had TEPCO done the right things (upgrade the sea wall, resite the generators) it would likely stand as a testament to nuclear power's ability to weather whatever nature throws at them. Instead....
Instead, we have the amazing power of hindsight, deciding what TEPCO should have known about. This is true of all disasters. If we had known what we needed to do to avoid the disaster, then of course, we could have avoided the disaster. Or at least create a novel disaster that we hadn't expected!
Listen to you. Probably lived your whole life in the United States. Never been drafted. Never gone to war. Never been oppressed in any significant way. Never really known hardship or poverty. I'm not trying to make light of your life experience, which honestly I don't have any idea about. But there's lots of people on this thread specifically who seem happy to talk fliply about treason or anarchy or revolution. You know what, everyone has a beef with the Federal government but for the vast vast majority, their life here is very fortunate indeed compared to most of the rest of the world. That so many people from so many other places have come here to make their best effort at a better life is evidence that life in America is pretty good. Talking smack about the overthrow of the government seems entirely disconnected to actual reality, and it shouldn't be tolerated.
So do you have a point to that or are you just whining? So not everyone is happy with the world. Do you really want to give them valid pretext for armed rebellion.
You know, I've done lots of things that people disagree with, but for the real biggies, I usually wait a while and and talk it out with some reasonable people before I take the plunge. That Defense Distributed has been so entirely dogged about doing this as soon as possible, without ever really considering the consequences, with such obvious callous disregard for the outcomes for anyone other than themselves, qualifies them for our contempt.
So what did they do that was a problem? You mention "outcomes". What outcome could happen here that deserves your contempt? Shouldn't you have at least an inkling of a problem first?
Also, I find that most consideration of "outcome" really is about taking control of the process, here manufacture via 3-D printing. As many people have noted, there's no difference between this weapon and making a gun in a machine shop, except that the latter works better. And you can make a plastic gun in a machine shop too.
Popularizing such an inefficient weapon might actually save lives. It's something like how the highly popularized act of hijacking airplanes is seen as sexy terrorism rather than the more effective tactic of blowing up power substations.
So, no. Simply because it's "orwellian" is not an answer to bobaferret's question.
I disagree. Orwell wrote of such things in a profoundly negative light. So if something closely enough resembles such an idea from his books on totalitarianism that it is accepted as "Orwellian", then that's an answer in its own right.
It was a smaller tsunami than that exact same coastline experienced in June of 1896.
The reactor planners didn't look at one in 400 year events, but they did look at one in 100 year events. I think they would have noticed if there was a higher tsunami in 1896 at Fukushima than 15 meters (the alleged minimum height of the Fukushima tsunami in 2011). My understanding is that the sea wall that was built was intended to handle the tsunami generated by the 1896 earthquake.
This always happens. Lowest cost + government insurance = safety failure.
No. The federal government was the operator. There was no provision for insurance, government -backed or otherwise. It's worth remembering that government, both in the US and elsewhere, is routinely exempted from regulation that affects the private sector.
But since some of these consequences affect a large area and many people, and we are not all that forgiving...
So what? It's worth remembering that the people who deign to withhold their forgiveness are also part of the problem. Fukushima was still running because new power plant construction had been delayed and canceled over the past couple of decades precisely due to unforgiving public opinion.
Japan can't go the route of Germany and just get all of its base load power from France and peaking load power from Scandinavia.
Actually TMI and Fukushima show us that a lack of attention to detail can come back and bite because both were easily preventable incidents that happened due to shortcuts being taken.
Fukushima is not like Three Mile Island. It was due to a magnitude 9 earthquake and the subsequent tsunami, not a lack of attention to detail. Seriously, why are you neglecting the most important detail of Fukushima?
If TMI didn't have the strongest containment vessel at the time (due to the risk of a crash from the nearby airport) you'd be writing about a tragedy
No, what helped was cooling the reactor down. I see a best, a modest benefit (certainly not the difference between tragedy and not) to the extra structure, if they hadn't been able to cool the core.
It only looks "inherently safe" because the people responsible for nuclear safety do not think the way the above poster does - they don't just trust in God, they tie up their horse as well.
I have yet to see a better way to think about the problem. The thing that is missed here is that our industrial civilization is inherently dangerous while simultaneously inherently safe. Nuclear meltdowns are high profile, but there are plenty of other risks of similar or larger scale and duration that we've come to accept, such as the magnitude 9 earthquake that hit Japan and killed almost 16,000 people.
What makes them safe is that we understand in large part these dangers and have come to accept these risks. We also have an extensive recovery system for unexpected dangers.
So you don't think Fukushima had massively destructive consequences?
No. It's worth noting here the key observations: Fukushima didn't kill a lot of people (it has yet to kill anyone aside from industrial accidents or the initial tsunami flooding of the plant), most of the cost was due to the public reaction not the actual disaster, and the disaster occurred due to then unknown (but which are now known) consequences of a huge disaster.
Forced long term evacuation doesn't bother you?
No. Why should it? If we removed the potential for long term evacuation, then we wouldn't be able to support ourselves. Just look at power production. Everything has some potential for causing "long term evacuation" of some area. Mining of coal, uranium, and rare earths (for solar and wind generation) all involve the creation of piles of toxic tailings. Hydro creates lakes. Oil and natural gas storage can burn or explode.
Geothermal seems relatively mild in this light with relatively small land usage and material needs (most of the action happens underground or in heat exchangers), though it has the potential for heavy metal contamination of ground water.
Contamination of groundwater? Contamination of the ocean food chain?
Why should that bother me? It's not very much and most marine life that would be effected is small and short-lived enough that there is no consequence even for heavy levels of contamination.
Destruction isn't just junks of conrete and nuclear fuel being blown sky high
No nuclear accident at a civilian reactor has ever resulted in nuclear fuel being "blown sky high".
Your bad choices have a tendency to affect other people, giving them incentive to interfere
So what?
You can disagree or resent them for doing so, which won't stop them, or you can sit down and negotiate about where, exactly speaking, does the line between your business and other people's business go.
Or you can simply refuse to play ball. Going back to the example of Nazi bureaucrats, what sort of negotiation would have worked for their many victims?
Furthermore, one person's bad choices often represent opportunity for other people, thus giving them an incentive to seduce those people into making them. This can take many forms, from tobacco companies advertising their cancer sticks to banks suggesting loans a prospective customer can't actually afford. This, again, requires regulation, least freedom becomes an excuse for the scum of the earth to prey on people.
Why does it "require" regulation? I see that it is already self-regulating. People who get so seduced can learn from experience, should they bother to do so. For example, the developed world has spent considerable effort shielding the young from the evil of the world, but that hasn't made better people.
Exactly what munitions has Defense Distributed shipped? I could see this law applying to firearms, but how does it apply to a description of a firearm? If I emailed a photo of a gun to someone in Brazil, would I be shipping munitions? I think not. I'd be sending a photo.
I imagine the photo would have to be sufficiently detailed that it could contribute to design and construction of similar weapons (perhaps a sequence of pictures of gun cleaning procedures). The law is that broad.
The State Department isn't going to go after anyone with an email account and a digital camera, but I think they will go after government agencies and contractors that happen to do such things. Here's a story I heard from one of the people involved. I wrote this comment:
When I worked at JP Aerospace in Sacramento (2006-2009), this was a problem for us. JP Aerospace is a non-profit aerospace research group that currently launches mostly high altitude experimental, unmanned balloons. It also does balloon-based rocketry (the part that fell afoul of ITAR, so I understand).
At one point before my time, Jim âoeJ.P.â Powell had invited a school group from what I understand was Poland to visit the JP Aerospace facilities. This group was sponsored by the Department of State, who I dimly recall, had arranged the visit as part of a larger tour of places of scientific and technological interest.
The trip was canceled by another part of the Department of State, the part that handles ITAR. The only thing J.P. got was an apology.
The link above is to another story of the harm coming from ITAR.
This is not about the First Amendment. What they were doing was a brazen violation of ITAR
While technically correct, I disagree on its relevance to the First Amendment. ITAR is one of the more egregious violations of the First Amendment by the US federal government today. I don't understand how one can get such sprawling restrictions on speech and information for ITAR covered subjects (the US Munitions List which includes rocketry and encryption, BTW) when the First Amendment is such a broad ban on such regulation. But it happened.
And it is remarkably harmful to US competitiveness in areas subject to the law, such as aerospace (a foreign student can study aerospace openly in college, which has an exemption from ITAR, but they need a hard to get green card in order to work in aerospace due to ITAR).
Should Defense Distributed decide to contest this in court, I would contribute to their defense fund.
He was pointing out how the 2009 financial crisis was proof that regulation needed to be fixed.
No, it sounds just as bad in context. It's not like he's going to admit that he exploits crises for political gain. And merely having a crisis doesn't mean there's a regulation that needs to be fixed.
so you actually are getting the bang for your buck that the taxpayers and all those who are putting money into it expect, whether that be in the area of education or healthcare."
That's a highly unrealistic expectation. The only way I've seen that happen is by not having the federal government handle the task in the first place.
But, hey, go ahead and take things out of context. I bet you can even make this look bad if you try hard enough.
That's an easy one. It's another example of meddlesome bureaucrats interfering with human choice and freedom. Freedom means the freedom to make bad choices. That the bureaucrats in question are old school, goose-stepping Nazis is icing on the cake.
He knows as much about police work and catching criminals or preventing crime as your average sewer worker.
Not very useful unless you determine how much the average sewer worker knows. If they watch the appropriate TV shows, they might actually know a lot both about how crime occurs and the process of catching criminals, despite the notorious exaggerations and biases of that medium.
Eh, this turned out to be a rather weak example. Several large flaws with my assertion are: the areas where malaria is currently present are far harder to treat both due to the presence of malaria in non-human animals and because these societies tend to be dysfunctional; DDT is actually still used for malaria eradication - though it is more expensive than if it were produced in 60s volume; but if the heavy use of the 60s had continued, mosquitoes would have evolved DDT resistance; I read of numerous alternative approaches (draining marshes, spreading oil on breeding pools, non-DDT insecticide treated netting, etc) that while they don't render DDT obsolete, do indicate it is one tool of many; and there are a number of insecticides that are more effective at some of the roles that DDT was used for.
The US banned DDT in 1972 and there was a global ban implemented in 2004. Now the bans aren't all encompassing. DDT apparently can and is still used for mosquito control. So my reference has that going against it.
But what I notice is that they retreated from a focus on eradicating malaria to treatment and prevention of infection (such as insecticide impregnated netting) during that time. Maybe the problem of eradication really was too intractable for the remaining regions (either physically or politically), but the strategy shift corresponds with the removal of one of the prime tools for mosquito control used at the time.
In the history of mankind, it has never been a BAD idea to ban a pesticide.
The obvious counterexample is DDT. It got banned and as a result malaria wasn't eradicated. This link claims 50 million lives lost due to the ban since the 70s.
Unless in the process you punch several more holes. Now, I get your point, but I find it interesting that even the EPA is cautioning against just "plugging holes" without evaluating whether that's worth the cost or not.
A variety of dictators continue to have elections.
Anyways the point is that there has been right wing dictators
No, the point supposedly was that there was only right wing dictators in the Americas. I won't disagree with that or that most such dictators appear to be right wing or backed by the US. As to the rest of your post, I think it's on the mark.
Slashdot Mirror
You know what, as an outsider, I think the real problem is that the US has completely lost sight of what "Left wing" and "Right wing" or "Liberal" and "Conservative" mean. Hell, you're applying political labels to a non-political sporting event: how is that rational?
It's politics. And I suppose sports has no political or social connotation in the rest of the world. The same people play soccer and race yachts, right?
Step outside the echo chamber and consider it from a technical viewpoint instead of a political one. You'll see the corners that were cut then, especially all the extra things at Fukushima that relied on a supply of cooling water (eg. the removed fuel rods).
One can always burn more money. What's the cost/benefits justification that makes that better than "cutting corners"?
Fukashima was due to TEPCO cheaping out and not reinforcing the sea wall WHEN IT'S OWN GEOLOGISTS SUGGESTED THEY DO SO GIVEN THE HISTORY OF FAULT LINES AND TSUNAMI PATTERNS IN THE AREA.
Give the year. When did these geologists make this "suggestion"? I heard it was around 2008 or 2009. The plant was scheduled to be shut down in 2011. Why should they build a higher sea wall when the plant isn't operating that long? You are making this allegation in ignorance of what was going on.
And made worse by a string of stupid errors whose underlying theme was 'don't shut the systems down, we can fix them, if you really shut down fast we won't be able to restart easily'.
As the other replier noted, the reactors scrammed immediately. And it didn't take long after the accident started for them to decide to pour borated water and sea water in there as fast as possible to cool various reactors. At that point, they had written off those reactors.
Yes, had TEPCO done the right things (upgrade the sea wall, resite the generators) it would likely stand as a testament to nuclear power's ability to weather whatever nature throws at them. Instead ....
Instead, we have the amazing power of hindsight, deciding what TEPCO should have known about. This is true of all disasters. If we had known what we needed to do to avoid the disaster, then of course, we could have avoided the disaster. Or at least create a novel disaster that we hadn't expected!
Listen to you. Probably lived your whole life in the United States. Never been drafted. Never gone to war. Never been oppressed in any significant way. Never really known hardship or poverty. I'm not trying to make light of your life experience, which honestly I don't have any idea about. But there's lots of people on this thread specifically who seem happy to talk fliply about treason or anarchy or revolution. You know what, everyone has a beef with the Federal government but for the vast vast majority, their life here is very fortunate indeed compared to most of the rest of the world. That so many people from so many other places have come here to make their best effort at a better life is evidence that life in America is pretty good. Talking smack about the overthrow of the government seems entirely disconnected to actual reality, and it shouldn't be tolerated.
So do you have a point to that or are you just whining? So not everyone is happy with the world. Do you really want to give them valid pretext for armed rebellion.
You know, I've done lots of things that people disagree with, but for the real biggies, I usually wait a while and and talk it out with some reasonable people before I take the plunge. That Defense Distributed has been so entirely dogged about doing this as soon as possible, without ever really considering the consequences, with such obvious callous disregard for the outcomes for anyone other than themselves, qualifies them for our contempt.
So what did they do that was a problem? You mention "outcomes". What outcome could happen here that deserves your contempt? Shouldn't you have at least an inkling of a problem first?
Also, I find that most consideration of "outcome" really is about taking control of the process, here manufacture via 3-D printing. As many people have noted, there's no difference between this weapon and making a gun in a machine shop, except that the latter works better. And you can make a plastic gun in a machine shop too.
Popularizing such an inefficient weapon might actually save lives. It's something like how the highly popularized act of hijacking airplanes is seen as sexy terrorism rather than the more effective tactic of blowing up power substations.
So, no. Simply because it's "orwellian" is not an answer to bobaferret's question.
I disagree. Orwell wrote of such things in a profoundly negative light. So if something closely enough resembles such an idea from his books on totalitarianism that it is accepted as "Orwellian", then that's an answer in its own right.
That's really kind of an emotional reaction.
I noted that the second sentence written explains the question of the first sentence. Why is that an "emotional response"?
It was a smaller tsunami than that exact same coastline experienced in June of 1896.
The reactor planners didn't look at one in 400 year events, but they did look at one in 100 year events. I think they would have noticed if there was a higher tsunami in 1896 at Fukushima than 15 meters (the alleged minimum height of the Fukushima tsunami in 2011). My understanding is that the sea wall that was built was intended to handle the tsunami generated by the 1896 earthquake.
What's wrong with this? I know it's all George Orwell and stuff
You answered your own question.
This always happens. Lowest cost + government insurance = safety failure.
No. The federal government was the operator. There was no provision for insurance, government -backed or otherwise. It's worth remembering that government, both in the US and elsewhere, is routinely exempted from regulation that affects the private sector.
But since some of these consequences affect a large area and many people, and we are not all that forgiving ...
So what? It's worth remembering that the people who deign to withhold their forgiveness are also part of the problem. Fukushima was still running because new power plant construction had been delayed and canceled over the past couple of decades precisely due to unforgiving public opinion.
Japan can't go the route of Germany and just get all of its base load power from France and peaking load power from Scandinavia.
It's treason to plot the violent overthow of your own government.
But not if you succeed.
then he should get ready to run like a fugitive
I'm sure you've done something that someone would disagree with. Would you like to run like a fugitive?
I for one am gratified by the efficient workings of our Federal government in representing its citizens' interests.
Sure you are.
If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
The above came from dissenting opinion in "a case that has been long since superceded by a much better ruling".
Actually TMI and Fukushima show us that a lack of attention to detail can come back and bite because both were easily preventable incidents that happened due to shortcuts being taken.
Fukushima is not like Three Mile Island. It was due to a magnitude 9 earthquake and the subsequent tsunami, not a lack of attention to detail. Seriously, why are you neglecting the most important detail of Fukushima?
If TMI didn't have the strongest containment vessel at the time (due to the risk of a crash from the nearby airport) you'd be writing about a tragedy
No, what helped was cooling the reactor down. I see a best, a modest benefit (certainly not the difference between tragedy and not) to the extra structure, if they hadn't been able to cool the core.
It only looks "inherently safe" because the people responsible for nuclear safety do not think the way the above poster does - they don't just trust in God, they tie up their horse as well.
I have yet to see a better way to think about the problem. The thing that is missed here is that our industrial civilization is inherently dangerous while simultaneously inherently safe. Nuclear meltdowns are high profile, but there are plenty of other risks of similar or larger scale and duration that we've come to accept, such as the magnitude 9 earthquake that hit Japan and killed almost 16,000 people.
What makes them safe is that we understand in large part these dangers and have come to accept these risks. We also have an extensive recovery system for unexpected dangers.
So you don't think Fukushima had massively destructive consequences?
No. It's worth noting here the key observations: Fukushima didn't kill a lot of people (it has yet to kill anyone aside from industrial accidents or the initial tsunami flooding of the plant), most of the cost was due to the public reaction not the actual disaster, and the disaster occurred due to then unknown (but which are now known) consequences of a huge disaster.
Forced long term evacuation doesn't bother you?
No. Why should it? If we removed the potential for long term evacuation, then we wouldn't be able to support ourselves. Just look at power production. Everything has some potential for causing "long term evacuation" of some area. Mining of coal, uranium, and rare earths (for solar and wind generation) all involve the creation of piles of toxic tailings. Hydro creates lakes. Oil and natural gas storage can burn or explode.
Geothermal seems relatively mild in this light with relatively small land usage and material needs (most of the action happens underground or in heat exchangers), though it has the potential for heavy metal contamination of ground water.
Contamination of groundwater? Contamination of the ocean food chain?
Why should that bother me? It's not very much and most marine life that would be effected is small and short-lived enough that there is no consequence even for heavy levels of contamination.
Destruction isn't just junks of conrete and nuclear fuel being blown sky high
No nuclear accident at a civilian reactor has ever resulted in nuclear fuel being "blown sky high".
There are many forms of destruction.
Some of which are imaginary and/or misattributed.
Your bad choices have a tendency to affect other people, giving them incentive to interfere
So what?
You can disagree or resent them for doing so, which won't stop them, or you can sit down and negotiate about where, exactly speaking, does the line between your business and other people's business go.
Or you can simply refuse to play ball. Going back to the example of Nazi bureaucrats, what sort of negotiation would have worked for their many victims?
Furthermore, one person's bad choices often represent opportunity for other people, thus giving them an incentive to seduce those people into making them. This can take many forms, from tobacco companies advertising their cancer sticks to banks suggesting loans a prospective customer can't actually afford. This, again, requires regulation, least freedom becomes an excuse for the scum of the earth to prey on people.
Why does it "require" regulation? I see that it is already self-regulating. People who get so seduced can learn from experience, should they bother to do so. For example, the developed world has spent considerable effort shielding the young from the evil of the world, but that hasn't made better people.
Exactly what munitions has Defense Distributed shipped? I could see this law applying to firearms, but how does it apply to a description of a firearm? If I emailed a photo of a gun to someone in Brazil, would I be shipping munitions? I think not. I'd be sending a photo.
I imagine the photo would have to be sufficiently detailed that it could contribute to design and construction of similar weapons (perhaps a sequence of pictures of gun cleaning procedures). The law is that broad.
The State Department isn't going to go after anyone with an email account and a digital camera, but I think they will go after government agencies and contractors that happen to do such things. Here's a story I heard from one of the people involved. I wrote this comment:
When I worked at JP Aerospace in Sacramento (2006-2009), this was a problem for us. JP Aerospace is a non-profit aerospace research group that currently launches mostly high altitude experimental, unmanned balloons. It also does balloon-based rocketry (the part that fell afoul of ITAR, so I understand).
At one point before my time, Jim âoeJ.P.â Powell had invited a school group from what I understand was Poland to visit the JP Aerospace facilities. This group was sponsored by the Department of State, who I dimly recall, had arranged the visit as part of a larger tour of places of scientific and technological interest.
The trip was canceled by another part of the Department of State, the part that handles ITAR. The only thing J.P. got was an apology.
The link above is to another story of the harm coming from ITAR.
This is not about the First Amendment. What they were doing was a brazen violation of ITAR
While technically correct, I disagree on its relevance to the First Amendment. ITAR is one of the more egregious violations of the First Amendment by the US federal government today. I don't understand how one can get such sprawling restrictions on speech and information for ITAR covered subjects (the US Munitions List which includes rocketry and encryption, BTW) when the First Amendment is such a broad ban on such regulation. But it happened.
And it is remarkably harmful to US competitiveness in areas subject to the law, such as aerospace (a foreign student can study aerospace openly in college, which has an exemption from ITAR, but they need a hard to get green card in order to work in aerospace due to ITAR).
Should Defense Distributed decide to contest this in court, I would contribute to their defense fund.
He was pointing out how the 2009 financial crisis was proof that regulation needed to be fixed.
No, it sounds just as bad in context. It's not like he's going to admit that he exploits crises for political gain. And merely having a crisis doesn't mean there's a regulation that needs to be fixed.
so you actually are getting the bang for your buck that the taxpayers and all those who are putting money into it expect, whether that be in the area of education or healthcare."
That's a highly unrealistic expectation. The only way I've seen that happen is by not having the federal government handle the task in the first place.
But, hey, go ahead and take things out of context. I bet you can even make this look bad if you try hard enough.
That's an easy one. It's another example of meddlesome bureaucrats interfering with human choice and freedom. Freedom means the freedom to make bad choices. That the bureaucrats in question are old school, goose-stepping Nazis is icing on the cake.
He knows as much about police work and catching criminals or preventing crime as your average sewer worker.
Not very useful unless you determine how much the average sewer worker knows. If they watch the appropriate TV shows, they might actually know a lot both about how crime occurs and the process of catching criminals, despite the notorious exaggerations and biases of that medium.
Eh, this turned out to be a rather weak example. Several large flaws with my assertion are: the areas where malaria is currently present are far harder to treat both due to the presence of malaria in non-human animals and because these societies tend to be dysfunctional; DDT is actually still used for malaria eradication - though it is more expensive than if it were produced in 60s volume; but if the heavy use of the 60s had continued, mosquitoes would have evolved DDT resistance; I read of numerous alternative approaches (draining marshes, spreading oil on breeding pools, non-DDT insecticide treated netting, etc) that while they don't render DDT obsolete, do indicate it is one tool of many; and there are a number of insecticides that are more effective at some of the roles that DDT was used for.
The US banned DDT in 1972 and there was a global ban implemented in 2004. Now the bans aren't all encompassing. DDT apparently can and is still used for mosquito control. So my reference has that going against it.
But what I notice is that they retreated from a focus on eradicating malaria to treatment and prevention of infection (such as insecticide impregnated netting) during that time. Maybe the problem of eradication really was too intractable for the remaining regions (either physically or politically), but the strategy shift corresponds with the removal of one of the prime tools for mosquito control used at the time.
You're suggesting that the only way we will ever stop malaria is to poison mosquitoes into extinction?
It works.
50 million lives were lost because they weren't "rich enough" to deserve our health care or research funding. It's as simple as that.
Nonsense. The developed world doesn't have malaria now because they drove it to extinction in the wild via DDT and similar pesticides.
In the history of mankind, it has never been a BAD idea to ban a pesticide.
The obvious counterexample is DDT. It got banned and as a result malaria wasn't eradicated. This link claims 50 million lives lost due to the ban since the 70s.
But it is one less hole to worry about.
Unless in the process you punch several more holes. Now, I get your point, but I find it interesting that even the EPA is cautioning against just "plugging holes" without evaluating whether that's worth the cost or not.
Anyways the point is that there has been right wing dictators
No, the point supposedly was that there was only right wing dictators in the Americas. I won't disagree with that or that most such dictators appear to be right wing or backed by the US. As to the rest of your post, I think it's on the mark.