Word: racketeered
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...other form of carbon trading is to get Third World companies to cut their emissions to offset Western pollution. The reason this doesn't work--and why the carbon racket is a farce--is that you need a cap for cap-and-trade to work. Sulfur dioxide emissions in the U.S. were capped, and the trading system succeeded in reducing acid rain by half. But even the Kyoto treaty doesn't put any cap on greenhouse gases in China and India, where billions of these carbon credits are traded. Sure, you can pretend you're offsetting Western greenhouse pollution...
...independence, America threw off the carapace of regulations and treaties that applied to British colonies. This meant we would have to deal on our own with the Barbary States. The Barbary States--Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli--were four North African countries whose revenues came from a naval protection racket they had been running in the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean since the late 16th century. They seized foreign ships and enslaved the crews. If you paid them tribute in advance, they would leave you alone. Otherwise, you would have to ransom captives on an ad hoc basis. Their most...
...Since the North is in many respects a state-run criminal enterprise (reportedly replete with drug-running operations, and scams to counterfeit everything from U.S. dollars to Marlboro cigarettes to Viagra), this may be seen as pure goodfella fury at being stung by the very victims its own shakedown racket was supposed to be bilking. Or it may be that since the Macau seizures are practically the only penalties Pyongyang has suffered (thus far the U.N. sanctions enacted after last fall's test are mere pinpricks), it wanted to make sure it had an absolutely risk-free economic playing field...
...think now that he was trying to tell me something." But Richard said he didn't ever knock on his neighbors' door, in part because he did not like Devlin. "I thought of him as some brat who was always banging on things in the apartment, making a racket," Richard said, adding that he never had a chance to talk to Shawn alone. "I never saw him without Devo [Mike Devlin]," said Richard. "They were always together...
...Asian cities are noisy but few approach the sprawling mega-cities of South Asia - Bombay, Dhaka, Delhi - for sheer racket. It seems almost compulsory in south Asia to use your horn constantly. On a recent visit to Dhaka, Bangladesh, I noticed that the taxi driver I hired had worn smooth a spot on his steering wheel where his right thumb rested and pressed the horn incessantly as he weaved through traffic. In India and Bangladesh, turn signals and rear mirrors are for sissies. Drivers are responsible for what's ahead of them, not what's behind. Many studiously ignore vehicles...