FUKUSHIMA --A GLOBAL DISASTER --MAKES FEAR OF NUCLEAR JUSTIFIED

FUKUSHIMA--A GLOBAL DISASTER--MAKES FEAR OF NUCLEAR JUSTIFIED

Recently I have seen an upsurge of an attitude about nuclear ionizing radiation which I might call “the “don't worry it’s harmless” school of thought. Such ideas, to my chagrin, are often expressed by my family dentist and the local orthopedic surgeon.  I excuse their opinions, knowing they are colored by the fact that they prefer to have their patients think that their use of X rays (and a good part of how they make their comfortable incomes) incurs no danger to their patients.  Their statements are in general valid...though more powerful ionizing radiation used in other protocols of medicine (i.e. MRIs) have been thoroughly criticized. But the media and practitioners of public opinion-control who have deep-rooted stakes in the viability and continued profitability of nuclear power are those with whom I have a real problem. Recently, some have argued, like my dentist, that radiation exposure should not be so frightening. For one example of such opinion pieces which look at radiation exposure through rose-colored glasses...(and may help get stories and books published by trade organizations) you may read:“Fear vs. Radiation: The Mismatch” by David Ropeik, NYT Opinion.

The blossoming of pieces such as those by Mr. Ropeik, who claims to be a risk analyst, is perhaps the natural outgrowth of the disaster that nuclear power has proved itself to be in the last two years as we all gaze on the slowly deteriorating conditions at Fukushima crippled since 11 March 2011. The Level 7 nuclear “event” (7 is the highest) in Japan is the second nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in little more than a quarter century. It is Fukushima which makes liars our of the nuclear advocates who attempt to paint nuclear as American as apple pie and as safe! After Chernobyl, and now Fukushima, world opinion now seriously questions the safety of this “most dangerous way to boil water” and to look more critically at all those sooth sayers in the nuclear industry who had profits rather than safety on their minds.  Particularly devastating for the “its safe” crowd has been the disaster at Fukushima, occurring in a nation which prides itself on meticulousness, care and caution. If the methodical Japanese can't keep a lid on nuclear, how can we expect the Russians, Americans, or even French to do it any better. But the fear is not simply the result of the number of radiation deaths (a number difficult to pin down since effects take a long time to show up), which are admittedly...so far...few. The real fear is and should be of the long term contamination of wide swaths of countryside, the possibility of widely dispersed diluted amounts of biologically active nuclides being concentrated by the marine food chain, the direct contamination of water, soils, and food, the displacement of entire communities, the loss of agricultural areas to long term (virtually permanent)nuclear contamination, and finally not to mention the monstrous and debilitating costs. Risk analyst such as Mr. Ropeik make that analyis.  What we do know is that Fukushima will eventually take four decades to clean up and cost unknown billions.  After Chernobyl and now Fukushima the wisdom of this form of electrical generation is now more likely to be questioned. More and more thoughtful and knowledgeable leaders now consider nuclear to be too dangerous, unpredictable, and ultimately ruinously expensive.  Now Germany (!), the financial and industrial powerhouse of Europe has decided to bring and end to its reliance on nuclear. Events such as this must make the powerful nuclear industry and their investors and political supporters shake in their boots and direct them to mount their campaigns of disinformation...an attempted “clean up” of their own.

So let's take a bit of review regarding the history of the earlier disaster at Chernobyl, since the Fukusihma event is difficult to evaluate since its story is still unfolding and the unpalatable and frightening facts are still “leaking out” from TEPCO like the highly contaminated water carrying dangerous Cesium 137 which is slowly leaking into the formerly pristine Pacific Ocean.

On April 26, 1986 the Chernobyl Plant at Pripyat in east Central Europe, in what is now the Ukraine,was the site of a massive nuclear accident which caused an explosion and fire that released a huge cloud of radioactive dust which dispersed and settled over a vast area of the Ukraine. Global winds carried nuclear dust west which settled over all of Europe, except for Spain and Portugal. (Even today some parts of northern Scotland still have readily detectable levels of radioactivity in their soils and in the foods produced on them. In Germany hunters can not eat the boars they kill in the forests because the meat of these beasts is too radioactive.)

The world first became aware of the Chernobyl accident two days after the explosion when workers in a Swedish nuclear power plant in Forsmark,(nearly 700 miles away from Chernobyl) were found to have radioactive dust on their clothes. Swedish nuclear regulatory investigators attempting to find the "leak" at Forsmark were finally led to conclude the nuclear materials were coming from a far off site--in the Ukraine.

In attempting to control the disaster at Chernobyl many workers heroically exposed themselves to fatal doses of radioactivity.  In the end it took the efforts of some half a million workers and cost 18 billion Russian rubles (today $600 million dollars) to temporarily staunch the leak of radioactivity and stabilize the shattered Chernobyl plant.  To accomplish this the plant was covered over with tons of concrete and then an outer concrete shield was built over the entire plant.  But over the years, the outer shield has decayed and cracked and is now subject to collapse---and a possible repeat of the leaks and spread of nuclear contamination.  As a consequence, the Ukraine is presently building on the site an even more massive (20,000 ton) arched concrete “sarcophagus” which is being built on rails next to the plant and will  when completed (at a cost of some 1.5 billion Euros) be slid over the existing plant on rails to cover and protect the plant for some future date, when the process will no doubt have to be repeated to prevent further harmful leakage.

As a result of the 1986 accident a vast area of the highly productive agricultural lands of the Ukraine were so badly contaminated by radioactive dust that they had to be permanently evacuated and their farms, homes and businesses abandoned for (20,000 years) virtually forever.  Russian and Ukraine officials cleared an area within a radius of about 19 miles from the plant as too contaminated with radioactive materials for human life. This zone covering nearly 1,100 square miles is known as the “zone of alienation" and is nearly the size of the US State of Rhode Island. After more than a quarter century it remains uninhabited. The untended farms, fields and meadows have have reverted to forests where wildlife such as wolves and moose now wander. Officials estimate that the land will not be safe for human habitation for 20,000 years!

Can we all afford to put at risk of permanent contamination an area the size of the State of Rhode Island around each of our many nuclear plants? Would the aftermath of a massive nuclear accident result in multiple zones “of alienation” for twenty millennia?  Imagine the effects on our metropolitan areas (some of which like New York are virtually ringed with old nuclear plants similar to those at Fukushima). As humans we are supposed to be able to learn from our mistakes.  Chernobyl was enough to have most of us realize nuclear power was a big mistake. One mistake was enough for some of us. But now after Fukushima, if we do not change our ways and turn to better, less expensive, systems less prone to accidents which become global disasters----in a word safer ways to generate electricity--such as solar panels, wind, renewables, geothermal, tidal, etcetera, etcetera, after this second global disaster Fukushima, if we do nothing we are just plain dumb!

Get the picture?

rjk

TIME FOR GEN. KEITH ALEXANDER TO GO!

Recent revelations regarding the excesses of the NSA and its gratuitous spying on our own allies, such as tapping German chancellor Angela Merkel's personal  cell phone, proves Snowden was right!  (What could we have learned about global terrorists from that phone tap? )    The NSA under Gen.  Alexander ( the man who began his career hoovering up war data in US-occupied Iraq, who carried those very same procedures and polices home to the USA , and one who it has been recently revealed spent tens of millions of tax dollars creating a  goldfinger-like Star Wars fantasy "spy command center" at NSA headquarters in Washington)  is obviously out of control. Let's bring that young man Snowden back from Russia and award him with a whistleblower's medal.

We are a great nation, which on one level leads the world because of our immense wealth, and military power.  But on another, our world stature comes from our moral authority and the trust other nations have in our system of justice and the adherence of our leaders to legal standards.   That trust  is also derived from our our past behaviors  in which we worked to foster a world in which all nations including the USA exists within a frame work of mutually acceptable laws. We are at our core a nation of laws...our own and those we have help foster internationally.  Too often in recent decades, since 9-11 and the Bush-Cheney debacle, we have become the world's law breaker, engaging in illegal invasions, occupations, wars, torture, renditions, extrajudicial assassinations, and setting up off-shore gulags, like Guantanamo....in short a "do what we say and not what we do" nation---all to our own detriment and to the detriment of our businesses and to that of the world as a whole.

It's time for President Obama, who is down deep a decent, intelligent man and a leader who respects the law, to rise up and assert his authority.  Firing General Alexander might be a good first bold step.  That should be followed by retreating from the undeserved attempts at arresting and punishing Mr. Snowden, without whom all of this mess would still be festering under the national carpet.

CIA DOUBLE TAP DRONE STRIKES ARE WAR CRIMES

CIA "Double Tap" Drone Strikes Indicate President Obama  Misleads American Public On His Drone Strategy.

In his May 23 2013 address at  the Defense University on drone warfare the President assured the American public that his use of armed unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) was legal and that his government has taken scrupulous care to avoid civilians casualties.  But past studies by Stamford and New York Universities and more recently a study by Amnesty International (See my previous blog) indicate he mislead the public.  The tactics used by the CIA, and apparently supported by Mr. Obama, are designed not to simply kill insurgents "allied with Al Qaeda" as he claims, but to terrorize entire civilian populations which may harbor these extremists.  That is a war crime and one reason why he can not come clean with the American public.

The earlier studies and more recent ones document that about one-third of all casualties are innocent civilians.   That does not seem to square with the President's description of "precision, surgical strikes".  So there is more here than meets the casual eye.  What that "more" is has been touched upon by both the Stamford study and the recent  Amnesty International report which document the prevalence of what are termed "double tap" strikes which intentionally target first responders and civilians.  Such a tactic is a war crime....no question.

The use of "double tap" strikes suggest that the actual purpose and intent of the drone campaign is not simply "neutralizing" bad guys but to cow and  terrorize the civilians who may tend to support the militant insurgency.  Apparently that is OK with the President as long as it remains a secret....but if it comes out in the open ( as at present) he and all those who are complicit in this campaign are potentially subject to war crimes charges.  In these attacks, a first strike by a drone hellfire missile is followed a few minutes later by a second ( or even a third missile)  which kills near by residents, or relatives who had responded  to help the wounded, or find elderly or  children buried in the rubble. Often police, doctors and other first responders are killed in this manner.   The "double tap" strike is of course a heinous war crime, designed not to surgically kill the bad guys..but to  sow terror and are no different than the car or truck bomb used by the other side. (see: "Outrage at CIA's deadly double tap drone attacks", in  "The Independent", by Jerome Taylor, 25 September, 2012)

The attempt to use terror by invading armies, and others to quell insurgency is as old as the hills. From Julius Caesar in Gaul , the Nazis in occupied France, to Lt Calley in Mai Lai, Vietnam, and now Obama in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere, when fighting a native insurgency the military (and sometimes their civilian leaders) believe they are in a battle for "the minds and hearts" of the natives. To win that battle they seek to terrorize the locals and so deny the insurgents (Gauls, Free French partisans, Viet Cong, Taliban, Al Qaeda, etc. ) sustenance and safe harbor. Obama's drone strikes in Pakistan are DESIGNED to kill indiscriminately so as to elicit terror. It explains why the civilian deaths are so high...one third of the total. Drones are a form of terrorism as brutal and inhumane as the car bombs the other side uses. The President's claim that the strikes are "surgical" and designed to "neutralize" our enemies with limited civilian casualties is a perversion of the truth. The revelation about "double tap" drone strikes is a shattering revelation which exposes the drone warfare strategy as a terrorist attacks similar to those used by less sophisticated car and satchel bombers. The second series of bombs from the drone takes out women and children, and innocent bystanders who in any normal society rush to the aid of the stricken. That is what our CIA is doing on a regular basis in Pakistan---killing, maiming and terrorizing whole villages all civilians---grandmothers! parents! children! Think about it...and oppose this horror and perversion of American values-- or become one with with the jack booted perpetrators of Oradour-sur-Glane.

Get the picture?

rjk

CIA TARGETS AFGHAN GRANDMOTHER AND 18 CIVILIAN LABORERS--INSISTS THEY ARE TERRORISTS

CIA drone kills Afghan grandmother and 18 civilian laborers in drone attacks--yet claims they target only terrorists and kill no civilians.

 “In his May 23, 2013 speech on drone policy delivered at the National Defense University, in Washington the Presidentried to assure the American public about his drone warfare by stating that outside of Afghanistan, which is a legitimate theater of war, the US targets "only al Qaeda and its associated forces”. At that time he also claimed he is “bound by state sovereignty" and also must "act (only) against terrorists who pose an imminent threat to the American people”. Furthermore, he stated, before any strike there must be “near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured." The President's press secretary recently stated (October 22), flatly that “targeted lethal action (drone strikes) are necessary, are legal, and only kill terrorists.” Though he did not elaborate how he defined a terrorist.

Some ugly facts about OBAMA's drone warfare campaign the president does not know or did not acknowledge: 

 The Bureau of Investigative Journalism based in London states that the US, under President Obama’s direction, has carried out 376 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004. The estimated death toll from media reports indicate more than 3,000 fatalities, of which approximately one-third, or approximately one-thousand (1000) were innocent civilians. Thus, under Obama, approximately one-in-three victims of drone attacks are non-combatants mostly the elderly, women, young boys and small children. How can the President be so wrong?

 Several times before, (see my previous blogs) I have railed against the America’s use of drones and drone warfare. This secret method of killing our so called enemies is mostly carried out in those distant parts of the world where few reporters can go, where the terrain is daunting, natives are poor, and speak incomprehensible dialects, and where custom dictates that they bury their dead within a few hours of an attack, leaving no evidence. Since these drone attacks are covert acts over which our own government has drawn a heavy veil of secrecy, the attacks are well-hidden and ignored by Congress and to a large degree our citizenry. In those previous blogs I was often reporting simply on what I read in the press, knowing full well the difficulties of sorting out the facts from these remote places. I weighed accounts from US government representatives: “We didn't do it!, or "The deceased were all heavily armed militant males ready to kill American troops.” Only to find out later that these accounts were untenable based on the known circumstances,ages of the victims, or conditions of the attack. But I persisted in comparing US accounts with those from Reuters, NY Times, Washington Post, Le Monde, Al Jazzeera or other main-line sources which often presented a different view. Frequently, the accounts conflicted wildly. (Well they did in the beginning, but all too often new evidences emerged which undermined the account of the US government.) The shroud of secrecy of our government, the remote and impenetrable nature of the terrain and lack of reporting from the actual site made it difficult to pin down facts. But a recent piece by Katherine Houreld in Reuters (Islamabad, October 22, 2013) makes clear in some cases who the culprits are.

t Katharine Houreld's piece in Reuters is not based on hear-say or second-hand reporting, but on a formal investigative study by Amnesty International using creditable researchers who visited the actual attack sites. The investigators focused on two specific drone attacks in North Waziristan, part of Pakistan's remote, native territories situated along the border with Afghanistan and one of the most frequently hit by drone-attacks in the world.

Amnesty International (AI) a London-based, non-profit, human rights organization founded in 1966, conducted more than sixty interviews of the Waziristan native population using teams of researchers, translators and others, working independently of each other. They recovered physical data, photographs and other facts-on-the ground to support their findings concerning the nature of the strikes, those killed, and the ages, sex and occupations of the victims, as well as the circumstances of the attack, such as the time of day and weather.

The teams focused on only two of many attacks which had taken place in that area. Ms. Houreld's piece states:
”London-based Amnesty said a drone strike in the village of Ghundi Kala in October 2012 killed Mamana Bibi, 68, the wife of a retired school principal, as she was gathering vegetables. Her five grandchildren were wounded, including Safdar, 3, who fell off a roof and broke bones in his chest and shoulders. It was unclear why Bibi was hit. The weather was clear, providing good visibility to drone operators, the report said. In the second incident, 18 men were killed in the village of Zowi Sidgi in July 2012. Residents described the dead as a woodcutter, vegetable seller and miners who had gathered in the shade at dusk to talk after a day's work. The youngest was 14. The first drone strike killed at least eight people in all, the report said. The second one killed more locals as they were trying to rescue the wounded. "Everyone in the hut was cut to pieces," Amnesty quoted one witness as saying. "We started to panic and each person was trying to run in a different direction." According to the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, drones often also target rescuers coming to help those injured in an initial strike." Their findings clearly indicate that the US government spokesmen, the President, and his spokesmen and others are not telling the truth. Perhaps now, as with the NSA revelations, the President and the nation will have to face the ugly truth concerning how we conduct our secret, inhumane, costly, counter productive and wildly expensive wars.

ON CRAP COFFEE, VERMONT MANURE AND UNEQUAL WEALTH IN USA

The Wealthy Rather Spend Their Money On Crap Coffee Than Pay More In Taxes

"Above all things good policy is to be used so that the treasures and monies in a state be not gathered into a few hands... Money is like fertilizer, not good except it be spread about." Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

That good advice has been ignored for four decades by the USA, the modern, western nation with the highest level of wealth and income inequality. (Turkey, Mexico and Chile, the world leaders in this unsavory category have higher levels of wealth inequality than we do.) American "exceptionalism" is often explained as a result of our freedom, economic opportunity and equality. But today we discover that those commendable national values have been compromised in the last three or four decades by the concentration of wealth into the hands of a very few. The USA has one of the lowest rates of upward mobility, stagnant middle and working class incomes, and we suffer from a situation in which the top 20% of the the population control more than 85% of the nation's wealth and income. That level of wealth disparity is found only in South America (such as in Mexico and Chile) and other tin-pot dictatorships where the "Jefe" and his family and friends control all the wealth.

Back to the USA. Do the math. Our wealth distribution leaves the lower 80% of the population with only 15% of the nation's wealth and income. Like cow manure on a Vermont dairy farm where help is scarce, the smelly stuff is sometimes piled high in the cow enclosure. It remains concentrated where it was dropped and is not being spread onto the fields where it would green the grass, nurture the cows, and bring higher income to the farmer. In Vermont, such circumstances lead to rotting piles of manure, bad smells, flies, contaminated domestic water wells, and pollution seeping into local streams. In the economic realm, it leads inequality, weak demand, long recessions, and a slow decline of national vigor.

In the US economy, where enormous wealth is concentrated in the upper one tenth of one percent, "weak demand" is almost universally blamed as the major cause of our present long and deep recession (the 2007 Great Recession). When 85 % of the nation'a wealth and income is confined to the upper 20%, the vast majority of our citizens in the bottom 80% must struggle to make do with only 15% of the nation's wealth-income pie. They do not have enough money in hand to make purchases which would boost demand. That is bad for the general economy. To make matters worse, the affluent use their wealth to lobby the government for reductions in their taxes and restrictions on government spending, policies which inhibit the government’s ability help alleviate the plight of the struggling middle class by putting money in the hands of those who would spend it and increase demand. Given our political system, the wealthy are often successful in this goal, creating the vicious cycle of lower taxes on the upper level earners, increased wealth disparity, low demand, poor business profits, high unemployment, and shrinking incomes for the lower four fifths of the wealth distribution---resulting in even less demand.

Francis Bacon put his finger on the problem way back in 16th Century. The spending habits and cash-use patterns of the super affluent do not “fertilize” the broader economy. These people do not buy automobiles, washing machines, local dairy products or local homes. Their numbers are few and their ability to spread their wealth by spending is limited, but more importantly they spend their money in ways that do not nurture wealth and job generation for the vast majority of Americans. Their money remains in one place, like a pile of Vermont cow manure, and if it is not spread on the fields it begins to stink.

One example of the disfunction caused by concentration of wealth is the explosion of weird, bizarre and exotic foods, drinks and accoutrements sold in upscale stores and on the world markets for the super affluent. These lucky folks, often the "nouveau riche", are determined to possess and display exotica to establish and proclaim their wealth status. One of the more bizarre examples of this kind of spending is the world's most expensive coffee--Terra Nero coffee, which sells in London’s Harrods for about £6500 ($10,400) and is said to come packed in 24 karat gold-foil bags.

Terra Nero is a form of crap coffee. In Indonesia's coffee-growing regions, local coffee-berry pickers discovered perhaps a decade ago that the the wild Indonesian civet cat, or Asian Palm Civet, made night visits to the coffee plantations where the pickers labored. In the morning, the workers found the evidences of civit depredations in the form of ripe berries stripped from the coffee branches, and on the ground, the tell-tale scat (excrement) of the Palm Civit. The scats or civit stools were studded with the evidence of what the civit ate: the indigestible part of the coffee berry--coffee beans. (The Palm Civet is a relatively rare, small, omnivorous mammal, about the size of a house cat. They are widely distributed in Africa and throughout southeast Asia. In the wild, they inhabit the ecological niche of the raccoon or opossum of North America.)

Perhaps one of the coffee-berry pickers was desperate for some partly-dried coffee beans and collected the scats, separated out the berries and roasted them, then brewed a quick cup of coffee. He found the flavor of the brew "distinctive”. The cause of this flavor may result from the fact that the Palm Civet is known to have a powerful defense mechanism in the form of a perineal (anal) scent gland which exudes a smelly substance during defecation which may flavor the beans. Or perhaps the simple passage of the beans,through the digestive tract of this critter, where the beans come into intimate contact with other civit foods, such as over-ripe fruits, partially-chewed-up insects, and small mammal remains all typically found within the alimentary tract of a nocturnal omnivore. But for whatever reason, the coffee pickers just loved the crappy stuff, calling it "kopi luwak" and avidly collecting it to savor the “distinctive” aroma of the beans and the "wild" taste of the coffee brewed from them. As you might expect, collecting civet poo from under brambles and thick brush on a steep Indonesian hillside might be quite messy and difficult. Also Palm Civits are not that common and thus their cat poo is also quite rare. The old economic adage concerning demand versus supply makes Asian Palm Civet crap and the beans found within the stools very valuable. Since only some 500 kilograms (or about 1000 lbs) are collected each year from selected major coffee plantations, the cost of the beans may reach $400 dollars a kilogram or about $200 dollars per pound.

As with other exotica, like North American black bear gall-bladders, shark fins, rhino horns, and elephant tusks, once the product becomes established as a status symbol, a market will develop for it among the super wealthy. This jacks up the price and tends to draw in entrepreneurs who attempt to streamline production and increase output and profits. At the present time, it is virtually impossible to find “wild” kopi luwak on the market. Chinese and Indonesian businessmen have largely taken over production. They have eliminated the coffee bean pickers, and wasteful time-consuming searching on steep hillsides. Many kopi luwak crap coffee producers generate their beans by force-feeding caged Palm Civets, or other other unrelated critters, collecting the feces from below their confining cages and generating a agro-business version of kopi luwak crap coffee.

Each year the wealthy buy up the last gold-foil wrapped kilogram of crap coffee, however disgusting it sounds or weird it tastes. They much prefer to spend their money on crap coffee than on slightly higher taxes. They don't buy products that generate jobs in the real economy like those from the local corner store, or the local factory. But for the rest of us it is wise to remember Francis Bacon's warning that keeping the fertilizer in the cow corral is not good for our economy. It tends to produce useless, ecologically questionable stuff like “crap coffee” and to increase the wealth gap, and prolong our deep, dreary economic recessions.

Get the picture?

k rjk

NSA SHARES RAW DATA WITH ISRAEL, MAKES MOCKERY OF FOURTH AMENDMENT

I know our National Security Agency (NSA) is out there snooping on our emails, texts, phone calls and so forth. I don't like it. Government spying on its own citizens seems truly un-American to me. This is supposed to be the "land of the free" where our persons, houses, and papers are protected from government seizure. That includes our phone calls, emails and text messages as well. That is what makes us "exceptional".

But like most of us, I can be persuaded that with safeguards to do the right thing--the American men and women of the NSA will follow the rules and protect our rights. They come from the same culture, speak the same language and understand our laws and ways of expressing ourselves. So as Americans too, we would expect that they would diligently protect (most of the time) our Fourth Amendment Rights. (Recall that one? Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures...etc.) But after reading the latest Ed Snowden leak, I am not so certain, we can claim that as one of our exceptional rights as Americans.

Recent revelations of formal Israeli and US documents leaked by Edward Snowden and published in the LA Times September 13, 2013(www.latimes.com/.../la-fg-wn-nsa-intelligence-israel-edward-snow)in a piece by by Ken Dilanian, reveal that the National Security Agency---our own NSA---routinely shares “raw” intelligence data (emails, phone calls, electronic data, phone call content, names, etc., etc.) with Israel. Israel is an ally, but has a long history of going it alone, of illegal, extra-juridical assassinations, and of intensive spying efforts on the USA. I am not comfortable with some Israeli "techie"going over MY personal data, my phone calls, my emails. There is an historic, political, cultural and language divide between us and much greater chance that information can be misconstrued and misunderstood----and misused. Such raw data can certainly include sensitive information about Americans. Information which could be perverted by some foreign power. Such a policy makes a mockery of our Constitutional protections. It is very, very disturbing.

The leaked formal US documents indicate that Israel is "required to respect" the Fourth Amendment rights of any American's data "hoovered" in by the NSA and then without perusal passed on to the Israelis. But the formal document of understanding includes no actual sanctions or punishment if the foreign power fails to follow those rules. (It gives the impression that the the phrase "required to respect the American Fourth Amendment" is only a "wink wink" nudge nudge" pro forma inclusion in the boiler plate which means nothing and has no teeth.) Furthermore, the agreement permits the Israelis to hold on to the data for "a year" again with no oversight or controls, and there are no controls on what the Israelis do with the data, or who THEY can share it with. There is no way to logically explain such a breech of our own personal rights and security as this "handover" of NSA raw data to Israel. It must be addressed and changed.

What has, in effect, happened here is that the NSA, under President Obama, has handed over the protection of our Fourth American Constitutional rights to a foreign power with the NSA data. This is a astounding infringement on our rights of privacy from government intrusion...by our own government in collusion with a foreign power. That is a serious breach of the President's responsibility to protect our Constitution and our rights as Americans. How can President Obama, our Constitutional-law professor in the White House know about this and continue to permit it to occur? For this act makes a mockery of our Constitutional protections.

Get the picture?

rjk

OBAMA OUTFOXED BY RUSSIA

I can't complain about the recent developments in Syria. Fewer people will die in bomb blasts. But one must wonder at the serendipity of foreign affairs. One slip of the Obama lip got us caught up in war fever and another by John Kerry may have extricated us out of it. Secretary Kerry's off-the-cuff remark, "Let them get rid of their chemical weapons", in answer to a reporter's question on what would dissuade Obama from his determination to attack Syria did it. Kerry did not realize it then, but that statement was to make history.

The following is my analysis of why I think that Obama lost and the Russians won. (Well so far. We will have to see how this plays out.)

The long term Obama Middle East strategy was to somehow get rid of Assad, and in that way protect Israel, and importantly weaken and break up the "Shia Crescent", a zone comprised of Iran, Syria, Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Iraq. The Syria civil war was the best hope of the proponents of this strategy. As the war progressed the US secretly and with denials supported the anti-Assad rebels, through sending small arms, intelligence, cash flow by way of Saudi Arabia, Quatar, Turkey, and by "shoes" on the ground in the form of CIA and other agents provocateurs. For the pro-Israeli right and the AIPAC left this was a dream come true. Eliminate Assad and then deal with a weakened Hezbollah and the "evil" Iran.

But as the civil war deepened and intensified, the Syrian insurgency turned increasingly radical and fractured. There were no "reasonable centrists" fighting Assad. It seemed all the radical Sunni forces in the Moslem world had joined in to oppose the Syrian dictator. The logical answer was for the west to keep hands off Syria, but the political situation in the US made that option untenable. It soon became difficult for US operatives to distribute aid for fear it would wind up in the hands of dangerous al Qaeda elements and others. But the US persisted in its policies to weaken Assad in the hopes of a long war "al la Iraq-Iran" in which a third party can, by supporting the weaker element in a fight prolong the conflict and weaken both unpalatable combatants. A stalemate was what Obama was looking for that would weaken both Assad and the insurgency. This was not a politically strong position for our President for it opened him to criticism from both left and right. He was not satisfying the blood lust of the neo-con right or the passivity of the anti-war left.

On the home front, at this time, Obama's second term descended abruptly into political limbo. His political "mojo" appeared to be slipping through his long slim fingers. Several embarrassing scandals marred the early part of his first year. His popularity dropped to the lowest level of his presidency. About this time in August 2012 he made the off-the-cuff remark---the "red line"--statement which boxed him in to a response if Syria used chemical weapons. He also faced several severe domestic issues, immigration, implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the debt ceiling, etc.,etc. In effect Obama confronted both domestic and foreign stalemates. He feared if nothing changed, he was going to go down as a hog-tied president...with very little accomplished.

In Syria, Hezbollah and Iran had joined the Syrian forces in attempting to quell the insurgency. The war began to look like a proxy fight between the Sunni and Shia elements of the Moslem world. With the help of Russia, Hezbollah and Iran, Assad's prospects began to turn around and looked brighter. It seemed that Assad was going to be able to maintain his position. The idea of a fight to the death, was less likely and Assad, with Russian help looked to be gaining power and control. Obama and his allies were about to loose strategically, so they played down and ignored all efforts by the Russians and others for a diplomatic settlement.

Then someone fired off several canisters of Sarin gas into the suburbs of Damascus.

The tragedy, Obama's weak position at home, and his careless "red line"remark forced him to act belligerently or to appear weak and inconsequential. No president would want the latter so he was forced into the former action. The gas attack provided an opportunity--a causus belli--though for the US without a UN sanction it was an illegal one--to change both Obama's domestic and foreign policy stalemates. But how to do it? He decided to follow the Bush play book. Use the sarin gas incident to initiate a war with Syria. That might break up the Middle East log jam, get rid of Assad and have some positive out-come in the foreign policy area. It would also act to distract the public from the embarrassing in effectiveness of the administration's second term.

Obama announced his plan to bomb Syria, just the way Bush, Cheney and Don Rumsfeld would have. It was disappointing and disheartening to see Obama and his team morph into Neo cons. Their behavior overturned the will of the people in two elections in the blink of an eye. They should be roundly condemned for that.

The President's decision rightly faced a firestorm of criticism from all sides. Major allies chose not to participate. The UN labeled Obama's intentions "illegal", NATO, EU, the Arab League, and famously the UK, our obedient "shadow" in all of our, even foolhardy ventures, failed to join the march to war. The President stood all alone, in his illegal belligerency.

With few allies to follow him over the cliff (except the unfortunate Msr. Hollande of France) Mr. Obama finally paused to reconsider. After thinking long and hard, but not too deeply, he decided to throw the Syria bombing question to the Congress. He followed this stunning move with a pro-war propaganda barrage of lies, half-truths and innuendo that matched that of George Bush and Dick Cheney during the run up to the Iraq War. The people were unimpressed, his approval numbers did not rise, and polling in the House indicated an insuperable majority of "nays". It was apparent Mr. Obama's war proposal might pass the Senate, with arm twisting but not the House. Congress was not going to go with Mr. Obama's foolhardy war. This President would have to bomb Syria without Congressional approval.

But another slip of the lip by his new, war-zealot Secretary John Kerry blew all Obama's foolhardy plans away. A day after that, on September 10, the Russians and Syrians agreed to go ahead with a proposal for Syria to put its chemical weapons under international supervision. The President was boxed in again. Out foxed by Putin, he was not going to be able to bomb Syria. A new thrust for a diplomatic settlement would surely follow that Mr. Obama would have to acknowledge and support.

The Russians would still keep their economic ties and port facilities in Syria. Assad would probably not be unseated. The US would not have the opportunity to "degrade" Syria's military. It would not be able to shatter the Shia crescent. Iran would keeps it Syria ally (a bit weakened). Hezbollah would mainain its arms channel open to the east via Syria. The basic status quo would be reinstated. All negatives the way Obama saw it.

Mr Obama goes back to a hostile Congress, no longer distracted by foreign affairs and the Syrian war drum beat, with lower poll ratings and a weaker political position. He must still face the scandals of Benghazi, IRA, NRA, and the drip drip of embarrassing secrets from Mr. Snowden, etc. He must deal with the problems such as efforts to defund the ACA, lack of action on immigration, and the looming debt limit. His plan to further undermine and weaken a part of the world he (mistakenly in my view) sees as a threat to US interests has been avoided.

So this was not an Obama win. Though that is not how he and his minions will spin it. Expect them to claim the opposite. The truth is Mr. Obama brought us to the brink of war by his own bumbling and off the cuff remarks. For our deliverance we must thank the wise men of our own Congress and Senate (particularly Sen. Rand Paul), the British Parliament, the Russians(!) the cooler heads in the UN and the EU and others around the world for resisting the call to a senseless war. So Obama loses and perhaps those of us who see the world from a less parochial perspective have won. Let us hope we have learned a new lesson. The Bush style "cowboy days" are gone. In the future, a call to arms by the USA for no good reason may again result in the embarrassing silence and put down that Obama received.

Get the picture?

Rjk

OBAMA'S SYRIA WAR TO SAVE LEGACY

Our President Obama, (an undeserving Noble Peace Prize Laureate) is beating the drums for a war in Syria. He embarrasses us all as he unashamedly channels George Bush and Dick Cheney in his attempts to twist unwilling arms and propagandize for war. He is attempting to make the case for an illegal bombing campaign against Assad, allegedly to stop him from killing "innocent civilians". While Obama is propagandizing for a humanitarian cause from one side of his mouth, he was authorizing (Sept 7-8) more of his lethal drone strikes on a target in southern Afghanistan. The Pentagon bragged that that particular strike (on a vehicle) killed "ten" Afghan "militants". The officials on the ground however, picked up the mangled' charred bodies of four children and five women and the bus driver. That makes ten. The President and his men in the Pentagon do not count or discriminate so well from their drone perch at 10,000 feet above the surface. As the President tries to convince us that we should launch an "humanitarian" military attack on Syria to stop Assad's indiscriminate killing of women and children we learn he is authorizing attacks which amount to the very same crimes against humanity. Obama has made this a signature of his administration, authorizing over 350 such strikes in Pakistan alone, (let us for now ignore Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere he has used this lethal inhuman method) in the process, killing more than 2300 Pakistani innocent civilians. Fewer than 34 "militants" were killed in those strikes. Our President has some chutzpah to point his blood-stained finger at Assad, in an attempt to get us into a wider bloody, body strewn war in the Middle East.

Now about his war-drum beating on Syria.

President Obama carelessly drew his own "line in the sand" or "red line" on Syria's possible use of chemical weapons in an off-the-cuff remark to a reporter in an August, 2012 speech. That was a classic diplomat's mistake. Wise politicians and experienced diplomats learn not be so casual in their comments. His verbal carelessness certainly encouraged those, such as the jihadis and others (Saudi Arabians and Israelis) who would use lies, deception and subterfuge to force the US to intervene in this civil war, perhaps by firing Sarin gas weapons in a "false flag" attack. But more importantly, his own loose speech boxed Mr Obama into a set of responses perhaps he did not want to make. It removed any ability for this President to make nuanced decisions when and if those events did occur. Now in the face of the alleged use of Sarin gas against civilians in Syria, the President found himself with his self-imposed limited options. He was now forced to make good on his threats. If he does not act decisively HIS international credibility is weakened. But his greater fear is a domestic one. He fears most that his political rivals would batter him with charges of being a blabbermouth, a lousy diplomat and a weakling. The name calling he might not mind, being a politician. Of great concern to Obama is that his perceived weakness would emboldened his domestic opponents. They might be able to stall or nullify the Obama second-term political agenda. His whole political career and his legacy as first black president might be threatened by a stupid "slip of the lip" on Syria. For a politician that would indeed be a big pay out....too big to take on the chin. He had to try and undo his faux pas. How? Start a war!

So let us be clear, the President's motivation is not humanitarian...if that bothered him, he would simply stop blowing up Pakistanis and Yemenis by the dozens with drone attacks. He is attempting to get the US to fight a war to protect HIS legacy and the remains of HIS presidency. To protect that legacy and his position in the history books he is willing to sacrifice the lives of thousands of innocent Syrians and perhaps hundreds of our young men and women in uniform. He is willing take the very likely chance that his "little" cruise missile attack does not start a larger war. He is willing to spend tens of billions of dollars (or very much more). He would open our dusty near-empty treasury vaults, still crammed full of IOUs from Bush's wars, and have to add more IOUs for this new Obama war to further stultify the US economy.

Presidents make mistakes. They are THEIR mistakes. President Obama can not RIGHT his mistakes by leading the nation in a phony, illegal war of his own making. Syria's civil war does not threaten us or our allies. Bombing it woud not make a significant difference in the war outcome. US bombing would only kill and maim more innocents. There are no humanitarian wars. If he is determined to respond to the deaths of these civilians. If he is really moved by humanitarian instincts, as he claims, he should put his energies into easing the plight of the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in that part of the world. He should convene a conference to find a peaceful solution to the Syria conflict. He could also stop killing innocent women and children in Afghanistan and in Pakistan by his "secret"drone war.

Get the picture?

rjk

VOTE NO! TO SYRIA WAR!

A "YES" VOTE WOULD OPEN DOOR TO WIDER WAR

I urge a NO vote on any legislation giving the President authority to attack Syria. Was Sarin gas used? It may have been. But who used it? That is the key question we must answer first before we commit to war. Obama and his team are attempting to obscure and conflate those two questions. More importantly such legislation would hand authority over to Obama to engage in a wider war...if he so desires. Not a sound idea, given our history with the Iraq War Resolution. Finally, a "no" vote by Congress would not send a "wrong message". That argument is specious and a red herring.

FIRST, we have only limited, and conflicting evidence concerning WHO authorized the gas attack. President Obama's assertion that he had "evidence" before the attack, has never seen the light of day, and thus has the credibility of Powell’s “vial of phony powder” at the UN. We do not know what that evidence is. It seems to be that Sarin gas was used. But that is not the key question. The Obama team seems to want to conflate these two unrelated questions (a la George Bush in the run up to the Iraq conflict). Thus the President's assertions remain unsubstantiated, conveniently hidden by his self-imposed vail of secrecy. Such secret evidences are not what a government needs to establish guilt in a court of law, or on the international stage. They do not rise to the level needed to actually convict a government and punish them, along with many innocents by starting a war....which is what Mr. Obama is asking for.

SECOND. A formal vote--even for a limited strike----is tantamount to a declaration of war! It can be used and abused to engage in a wider conflict, by President Obama, and anyone who comes after him, even if that document is very carefully worded. The example of the post 9-11 Iraq War Resolution Act the Congress handed over to President Bush is the prime example of the mis-use of such legislation. That document has been used to keep us at war for over a decade, in countries as far afield as Libya and Yemen. That resolution continues to plague us.

THIRD. The last thing this nation needs is ANOTHER WAR in the Middle East. Know this, that we must borrow the funds necessary just to rattle sabers and send the fleet into the Mediterranean. We are in sequestration now. That amount, costing us in the billions, were it spent here at home, is enough to solve the fiscal problems of a whole city like Detroit and it's millions of inhabitants. Imagine the additional costs of an actual strike and ---the unpredictable costs of an expanding war! We must attend to our own nation's needs first. We simply can not afford such a Syrian fiasco.

FOURTH. The hawks like to use the argument that we are sending the "wrong message" by not attacking. That is a classic red herring. Our credibility is NOT at stake here on this issue. On matters that are truly critical to our own national interests we have in the past and would continue to stand strong and do what is necessary and appropriate. With our overly robust military (by far the largest and the best in the world) we have no need to establish and reestablish our determination and military ability over and over again. So the argument of appearing weak and vacillating and sending a “wrong message” to Iran and other possible enemies by not striking Syria is a red herring and does not stand up to scrutiny. That argument also gives false options. To attack or not attack are not our only options. We can appear strong and engaged by encouraging and actively supporting a truce and diplomacy. Sadly Obama and his crowd seem to have abandoned that idea.

What choices the people of Syria make are their own and should be. We have no right to interfere. Our intervention can only muddy the waters, make no significant contribution to peace, harm more people than we help and have the likely potential of sliding us into a more expansive war by “mission creep”. Please remember, there are no humanitarian wars...only messy, bloody, expensive and unpredictable ones.

Get the picture?

rjk

NOT THE SMARTEST GUY IN THE ROOM!

It took a few years for him to be exposed...but President Obama has now proved it. Finally in the first few months of his second term we can conclude: HE IS NOT THE SMARTEST MAN IN THE ROOM, as some have claimed. Though what "rooms" he was entering and who populated them still remains a good question. But today, the pile up of second term scandals speak for themselves; with Obama at the helm, his administration has staggered from one crisis to another---the IRA scandal, the NSA scandal, the embarrassing Snowdon fiasco, perfidious behavior concerning Egypt's coup, the distortions and untruths he mouthed about domestic and world wide-spying, and now this---the Syria catastrophe.

Looking back on his predecessor, one begins to think perhaps Obama's IQ is not much higher than old GWB, a proven dummy. Furthermore, the administration's crises are too often of this President's own making such as his distortions on NSA spying and his loose lips on the civil war in Syria (his first mistake on that score). On Syria, in a too casual speech, he drew a line in the sand that foolishly boxed him in to "do something" if Syria used chemical weapons. In making that statement he put the ball in Assad's hands and Assad's enemies too. Had he just kept his mouth shut he might have still appeared "presidential". Now he appears ready to go off half-cocked, with no UN cover, and with a mere 9% of the nation supporting his belligerent Bush-like actions. He couldn't even drag along the UK's blustering David Cameron, whose Parliament wisely denied their PM support for this stupidity. At home, his loose speech has handed his opponents a cudgel to strike him with:"he's a wimp. He did not act decisively". So to appear "decisive" he has rattled sabers, has sent warships to the MED and threatens cruise missile-attacks on Syria.

Were Mr Obama really as smart as he thinks, he would have waited for the key question regarding this Sarin gas tragedy to be answered first. WHO RELEASED THE GAS? To mete out lethal punishment, we-the USA--must have that question answered clearly and decisively. We need more than the bluster of dusty old Joe Biden to reassure us. If we strike a nation with devastating effect, killing innocent civilians, and others as Obama would do, (for "humanitarian reasons") without the UN, and without the moral authority of well-established facts on who used the gas, we are simply as evil as the other "bad guys" in the world, and are simply falling back into a form of "Bush-behavior" we rejected so overwhelmingly in the last two elections. Being a powerful, but ill informed, law-breaking, bully nation is not my image of America.

On the question of who committed this act..we have little to go on. But motivation may point the finger at some possible culprits. One must ask, who would gain from such a tragedy? The unbiased observer finds blaming Assad, unlikely. Why would he do it? To bring down promised cruise missiles on his palace? Not likely. Assad, with the help of Iran, Russia and Hezbollah is presently, if slowly, winning the civil war. He would have no reason to use chemical weapons and undermine his recent successes. (And perhaps that fact--the war turning in Assad's favor--may be the single element which underlies the sinister motivations of this whole affair) On the other hand, those on the "loosing" side, al Qaida, various jihadists, the Israelis, the Saudi princes, and others have the clear motivation and opportunity to hand over to the Syrian insurgents a few, perhaps diluted, Sarin gas canisters with the evil hope that their use would, given the President's foolish line drawing statement, present the USA and its allies with a causus belli. So whether Obama has been hoodwinked into this fiasco, or stumbled into it stupidly, or schemed it up himself, it is still dumb. It is unconscionable for a nation in our present financial situation to spend billions on ill advised and unwarranted warfare, when our own populous is suffering so grievously. Think of it, just the funds expended to SEND our fleet to the MED (cash by the way, which we do not have and must borrow)would more than solve the awful fiscal problems for millions of people in Detroit!

This kind of ill-conceived belligerency is not what we expected from a seemingly smart guy, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and a legal scholar. The progressives in this nation who elected Mr. Obama expected more than just a black face in the White House. But that is all it seems that we got for our efforts. The faces and skin tones of our leadership changed after the election, but our nation under Obama continues on its self destructive course.

Get the picture?

Rjk

FRACKING: LOOKING BACK AFTER A DECADE

FRACKING IN BRIEF


Just a few years back, as a nation, we were wondering where our next tank of home heating-fuel or gasoline was to come from.  The recent (2003) development known as "fracking" has changed all of that.  Fracking has turned our interst to natual gas, a cleaner fuel, and one which has now become much more available to us. Fracking is a  term coined by oilmen working on the Barnett Shale in Texas in 2003 who linked the technology of driving horizontal wells with that of high pressure underground fluid injection wells to fracture deep sedimentary deposits so as to recover natural  gas trapped in sedimentary rock. Since that time thousands of such horizontal wells have been drilled and enormous quantities of natual gas have become available to consumers at low prices. Some descibe our new situation as becoming the "Saudi Arabia of Natural Gas".  This new method has a colorful and interesting history.


Way back in  the 1930s oil drillers learned how to "slant" oil bore pipe to reach hard-to-get oil reservoirs, or to illegally  poach oil from neighboring high-production wells.   In 1973 the Eastman Whipstock Company developed a slightly curved "whipstock" at the base of the well to gently turn the drill bit into another direction. Estman became the largest "directional" oil drilling company in the world, able to bend its drill pipes into a curve way below the surface. But the technology was time-consuming, expensive and not put into general use.  About that time too a new motor was developed which turned the drill bit by means of the circulating drilling mud. With these new "down hole" "mud motors" the bit could continue to turn at the bottom of the hole while the upper lengths of pipe remained stationary. Placing a bendable stub of pipe between the vertical pipe and the motor would cause the bit to change direction.  Since that time oil drillers have continued to perfect ways of determining direction and depth while drilling so that the drill bit and the following string of pipe could be very accurately located and positioned even thousands of feet down. They can even use this technology to turn an oil rig drill bit and the string of  steel pipe thousands of feet underground to make it drill horizontally rather than just straight down. In that way it could follow a rock stratum or seam of oil or gas bearing rock underground  It was a neat trick that made it possible to keep a rig in place and drill several locations of a reservoir, or tap into reservoirs not easily approached from directly above, like one under a town or under an ecologically sensitive area.  

Sadly these technical advances in oil drilling in the late 1980s are often sited as contributory factors to the bloody First Gulf War. Since that conflict also led to the Second Gulf War, the Afghanistan War, and its economic impacts even may have contributed to the Arab Spring the effects of this new technology may have been very far reaching indeed.


In Kuwait, in the late 1980s, British and American-operated oil rigs used directional or slant  drilling technology to siphon oil from neighboring Iraq. By slant drilling they could be sited directly above the center of the Kuwait oil reservoir but when no one was looking, turn the drill bit so it would "slant" into the rich oil-pool under neighboring Iraq.  When US-supported dictator Saddam Hussein learned that "his oil" was being siphoned off to Kuwait, a traditional competitor and enemy, he complained bitterly to Kuwait and to the USA authorities, but to no avail.  When diplomatic intervention failed to end the oil siphoning practice which Iraq claimed cost them some $8-9 billion dollars in lost revenues Saddam threatened war. With the loss of oil revenue and other severe economic problems weakening his regime, Saddam threatened to use his million man  army and considerable military hardware (supplied by the USA during the Iran-Iraq War) for an invasion of Kuwait.  On 2nd of August, Saddam did just that.  The first Gulf War 1990-91 an example of war precipitated in large part by new oil drilling technology was the result.


Back home, here in the USA our oil reserves had been pretty much depleted  by the turn of the millennium. Formerly a major oil exporter we became a major importer...heavily dependent upon ME oil and willing to cut corners and use our superior technology, and military might to get it--as in Kuwait   But at home to eke out profits, from depleted wells oil companies began experimenting with means to extract remnant oil in underground reservoirs.  They soon discovered that many of these fields had little oil left, but plenty of gas.  But in many places the gas was trapped in shale formations that were only minimally permeable.  Some companies, working the Barnett Shale in Texas realized that they could combine the new horizontal drilling techniques with newly designed high pressure pumps on the surface to force water into these resistant gas bearing, shale formations. The pressurized water would force its way into tiny fissures in the rock and expanded them.  When the pressure was eased, the fractured rock released the gas which then would flow back up the drill pipe to the surface where it was collected and stored  They also discovered that by adding certain chemicals to the high pressure fluids injected into the wells, they could more effectively enlarge the fractures and enhance the gas flow. Adding grit and sand, called "proppants" to these pressurized liquids were found to help to keep the tiny fractures open and enhance gas flow.

This is a brief explanation of the process called "fracking" or hydraulic fracturing shale rock formations underground to release trapped gas. With expansive areas of our nation underlain by these sedimentary formations, it soon became apparent that the USA might well be termed the "Saudi Arabia of natural gas".  Some geologists estimate that we may have more than 2,000 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of likely, probable, and potential reserves of natural gas.  At present rates of use (@ 24 tcf/ year) they estimate we might have reserves that could last our nation a hundred years!

SAY NO TO NATURAL GAS EXPORTERS

SAY NO TO EXPORT OF NATURAL GAS!

Gas companies want to exploit our newly abundant natural gas, sell it to China at high prices, and make themselves richer than Croesus--once again. They would leave the physical mess from "fracking" the shale deposits in our back yards, the polluted water, flammable water taps, warming climate and high unemployment for us to deal with. All this so we can buy trinkets from Walmart made in China, where employment remains high---all with our natural gas. Does that sound fair or wise to you?

Most Americans are still trying to digest the idea of "fracking" (See previous blog: " Fracking?"). Some of us have mastered the idea and now argue over the safety of the process, and whether we should or should not permit it in our own state. While the majority of us are thus occupied, others in industry and government have moved on. These business moguls have concluded fracking is a "done deal" and are now arguing over HOW they are going to "divvy up" our new-found wealth and abundant gas reserves for their benefit. Some favor exporting the product for quick sale...others more wisely would protect it, and use it as our primary, cheap domestic fuel to renew our faltering industrial base. If we do not get "up to speed" on this issue, the proverbial horse would have slunk out of corral, and then we closed the gate! The decisions being made now are critical while the majority of us are still deciding if the process is safe.

In a New York TImes opinion piece entitled: "Foreseeing Trouble in Exporting Natural Gas" by Cliff Krauss and Nelson Schwartz, August 15, 2013, the authors explain why Dow Chemical Corporation's chief CEO Andrew Liveris has made himself into an outcast among his fellow business leaders with his stand against exporting gas.

Andrew Liveris is one of the few leaders of industry here in the USA who is AGAINST exporting the USA's newly found reserves of natural gas, and instead favors using the cheap fuel to power our own US industries and energize a massive renewal of manufacturing and industry at home.

His angry business detractors call Mr. Liveris a "hypocrite" and worse because they see his proposal as self-serving (Dow Chemical uses a great deal of natural gas), but more importantly it is a blow against the first commandment of big business--- "free markets". The authors state:"Mr. Liveris says that he also favors free markets, but that energy, like defense and food, requires special care to protect the national interest. Exporting natural gas is fine, he says, but not at the price of importing it back in the form of goods made with cheap gas elsewhere." See op cit NYT August 15, 2013. This author agrees wholeheartedly.

That is, if we were to tap OUR natural gas and keep the vast majority of it to encourage our own heavy industries again we could reinvigorate our whole economy. Such a plan would tend to keep natural gas prices low here in the USA and permit a rebirth of industries which are heavy consumers of energy, such as chemical companies, metal extraction firms, manufacturing firms, etc. The dream of many in the middle class is that we would return to an America which actually builds things and has a flourishing industrial base. Cheap and abundant natural gas could stimulate such growth, bring back industries and increase demand for labor. Such generalized growth of the economy would would mean a surge in our GDP and a rebirth of jobs for middle class workers...now suffering from unemployment and low wages.

On the other hand the--"make a fast buck"--specialists in the oil companies would rather exploit OUR gas and export it to gas-poor regions and states such as the EU, China and elsewhere which would pay higher prices and generate more quick profits for producers. Those nations importing our natural gas would use it to fuel THEIR industries and employ THEIR citizenry to produce manufactured goods, and then we would have the "opportunity" to buy back these manufactured products--produced with energy pumped up from OUR back yards. Thus we would not only have to suffer the pain and indignity of environmental degradation, air and water pollution, but lose out on the return of the American dream as well.

If we are going to exploit the gas and suffer for it, let us at least see some improvement in our employment and economic plight! Say NO to exporting natural gas! Kudos to CEO Liveris for taking his principled and sensible stand.

Get the picture?

rjk

MANNING, SNOWDON EXPOSE GAP BETWEEN USA IDEALS AND WHAT GOV. DOES

MANNING, SNOWDON, EXPOSE HUGE GAP BETWEEN WHAT OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SAYS AND WHAT IT DOES.

Our recent history has many examples of courageous whistleblowers who somehow in the course of their careers and duties came upon evidence of government (or industry) wrongdoing and had the courage and determination to reveal it to the public. The names of Daniel Ellsberg (the Pentagon Papers), Mark Felt (Deep Throat)of the Nixon scandals, Frank Serpico who exposed corruption in the NY City Police Department, Karen Silkwood, who lost her life trying to expose lies and wrong-doing in the nuclear industry are all ensconced now in history as beneficent and even model citizens to be emulated. Over time, when society finally comes to realize their contributions many have had films produced and encomiums written of their lives. Two recent examples of these idealistic and courageous souls are those of Edward Snowdon, who exposed a massive domestic (and foreign) spying system secretly and probably illegally employed by the Obama government, and Bradley Manning who courageously revealed the wide-spread corruption and incidence of war crimes by American troops in Iraq.

These courageous sorts, have all experienced or somehow become aware of what our government or industry was doing and concluded that those actions were seriously in conflict with our ethics, morals, public statements, postures and Constitution. They understood they would suffer for their actions. Serpico was led into a shootout by his colleagues where he was shot in the face. His coworkers deserted him leaving him to lie bleeding on a Brooklyn, staircase. Silkwood, in face of death threats continued her work to expose wrongdoing. Manning knew he would be court-martialed and punished. Snowdon clearly knew he would face very serious charges and perhaps spend years in jail. Based on what we know of these individuals, none expected or sought personal advancement or financial gain. They are clearly different than the average joe or jane who almost invariably turns his or her back on wrongdoing or corruption and tucks those memories someplace deep in their consciousness, then goes on with their lives, perhaps with a few twinges of never-expressed guilt. So they ARE different. But are they “narcissistic”, “disturbed”, “weirdos”, “psychos”, as some would like to characterize them? Different yes, but based on their actions and statements one must conclude their differences are rooted in their heightened sense of right and wrong, their internalization of our nation's stated ideals and their willingness to take the consequences for revealing what they know as attacks on those ideals. We can and must applaud them for that.

Let us thank these individuals, and support them in their trials and tribulations with big government (and big business) because they are the beacons, like brilliant Pharos sited along our nation's course, which warn us of dangerous rocks and shoals ahead. Shoals which are an existential threat to our survival as a nation of free men and women. They warn us at these watersheds in our nation’a history, that our morals, our ideals, our very being, are at odds with and threatened by the direction our nation's leaders are often secretly attempting to steer the ship of state. Our government's political and policy decisions, often made for purposes of short term political gain, or as a result of poor judgement, corruption, or simple weakness, can come under needed scrutiny by the public only when revealed to the public. Manning and Snowdon have exposed the wide gap between what our government says and what it actually does. They have revealed the vast, yawning chasm that exists too often between our nation's ideals and its actual policies and behavior. Now these two men lie bleeding, like Frank Serpico on that Brooklyn staircase. The press, the government and the some elements of the citizenry are foolishly angry with their expose of the truth and resist the 1013 call to the ambulance. These resistant elements have not come to terms with the fact that the sacrifices of Manning and Snowdon give us the potential to initiate a public dialog and hopefully change the erroneous ways of our nation's leadership. We must act to help redirect the ship of state away from the rocks and shoals which threaten our existence as a nation of free men and women.

And history seems to suggest that at critical, junctures in our nations’s history as at present, that the number and persistence of whistleblowers are a good sign, a warning, and a measure of just how far we are drifting from our ideals. It is time now to take notice and reassess where we are heading.

Get the picture?

rjk

FUKUSHIMA CONTAMINATES PACIFIC --- NRA IGNORES PROBLEM OF BIOACCUMULATION

Even 300 tonnes [a day] — that's still going to be diluted to an almost undetectable level before it would get to any US territory," said the Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRA)commission's information officer, Scott Burnell.

In an article appearing in the Scientific American website, August 9, 2013 (Reuters' by Mari Saito. Antoni Slodowski ) entitled: "Japan says Fukushima leak worse than thought. Government joins clean up," the authors underscore the recent revelations that large volumes of radioactive water have been leaking form the plant site.

Though the Fukushima disaster, now more than two years away has faded in the public's consciousness, it has evidently not faded as a threat to the Japanese fishing industry and perhaps to the the well being of the nations on the rim of Pacific Basin.

The horrific disaster has morphed into a suppurating wound that threatens fish life in the Pacific and the fishermen who depend on the sea for their food and livelihood. We now know that as much as 300 tons of highly radioactive water is seeping each day from the plant site into the Pacific Ocean. That amount of radioactive water is equal to about 2 1/2 million liters or nearly 700,000 gallons per week...the water volume in an Olympic swimming pool It is estimated that ocean currents will eventually carry these pools of contaminated water to our western shores. Some estimate their arrival may be as soon as 2017. But as Scott Burnell of the NRA claims, dilution will save us from these effects. True the concentrations of radio cesium in the water column will be diluted, but the process of bioaccumulation will not be altered and fish in the food food chain will likely have higher concentrations of radio cesium than they do have now. The problem is that the living food web in the Pacific Ocean is capable of concentrating and magnifying even minuscule levels of radionucleides in the water to dangerous radioactive doses in top tier predator fish. That effect will not be altered by dilution.

Japanese Prime administer Shinzo Abe, a staunch nuclear power supporter, has been hesitant to act permitting TEPCO to focus on restarting their plants rather than facing the disaster at Fukushima site. With these present revelations he has finally been forced to take over control of the clean up. TEPCO, after 2 1/2 years has not been able to get the damaged plant under control or prevent the environmental disaster that is now unfolding. This should have been done two years ago.

TEPCO, the plant operator, has only just recently admitted that water is seeping from the plant into the Pacific Ocean. This is all very troubling. But the real threat is an economic one and not just for Japan but worldwide. Another troubling aspect is the "circling of the wagons" attitude by our own NRA seemingly more concerned about supporting nuclear power here in the US rather than facing up to its apparent short comings and danger to our world ecology.

Since the disaster, commercial fishing has been halted in the region of northeastern Japan. Fishermen in that area have been unable to operate or sell fish except to the government which simply analyzes their catch for radioactivity and consistently finds them too radioactive for consumption. See The Guardian, August 9, "Toxic Fukushima fallout threatens fisher men's livelihoods" Justin McCurry in Hisanohama, The Guardian, Friday 9 August 2013 13.56 EDT

Author McCurry quotes US Nuclear Regulatory Agency official Scott Burnell, the Nuclear Regulatory Agency information (disinformation?)officer and frequent apologist for the nuclear industry and their mishaps. Burnell spoke up promptly to underscore a "new" Nuclear Regulatory Commission talking point. After Three Mile Island, Chernobyl,too numerous little-reported nuclear industry leaks and disasters, and now the massive disaster at Fukushima, it has become difficult or impossible to stick to the mantra of the NRA that NUCLEAR POWER IS SAFE. Now the post-Fukushima line is: "Don't worry it is only 300 tons a day and so far away it will not affect us! ". To understand the twisted logic of these officials one must grasp the fact of the conflict inherent in Mr Burnell's position. He is part of an organization tasked with both regulating an industry and acting as its proponent for growth and expansion. The task is impossible. The NRA can not be unbiased in its evaluation. Its pronouncements generally fall well within the sway of the powerful nuclear power industry. In considering the NRA's position, we are reminded of the circumstances of the Fukushima disaster. That is just how the Japanese faltered and Fukushima was allowed to occur--- a too close relationship between TEPCO and the government regulators who were tasked with its oversight. We see here the same fault a parasitic relationship between the NRA and the nuclear industry.

Burnell's statement:. "Even 300 tonnes [a day] — that's still going to be diluted to an almost undetectable level before it would get to any US territory," is an example of the protectionist instinct of the NRA for ITS industry. Burnell was unaware of, or unwilling to discuss the probable outcome of such a massive dumps of nuclear waste water into the Pacific, that is long-term effects on the fauna due to bioaccumulation.

Can we assume that the Commission's information officer has never heard of biomagnification (bioaccumulation)? Fukushima presents us not with the simple dilution problem Burnell would like you to think it is. Pour a bottle of ink into one end of a swimming pool and give it a wew hours, and the ink pigment has dissipated, never to be detected on the other side of the pool due dilution and mass of the intervening water. But some substances, DDT, mercury and radioactive cesium 137 among them, are known to BIOACCUMULATE (biomagnify) in the marine food web, tainting the fish we would like to harvest. That would be a monstrous disaster....and a awful black eye for the nuclear industry and one that would be well deserved.

In the 1950s DDT was the most widely used pesticide. It was considered to be completly harmless to humans since it could not be absorbed by the human skin. For that reason in earlier times it was widely used to control lice on people, since it killed the lice but had no effect on their human hosts. It was used widely in the environment, in agriculture, and on cattle. On eastern Long Island where I lived as a young boy, it was the premiere agricultural pesticide, sprayed and dumped widely with little regard for safety. I remember seeing farmers pouring the white powder into their potato dusters and sprayers and mixing the slurry with their hands and arms. DDT was aerial sprayed on the salt marshes to keep down mosquitos. Soon it was so widely used that it was a very common constituent at low concentrations in the soil, the Sound and ground water on Long Island and in the nation as a whole. But the government and its scientists did not take into account the ability of the food web to concentrate such chemicals to unexpected levels.

In the late 1950s the US government's plan to eradicate the scourge of fire ants by a wide ranging program of aerial spraying, aroused the scientific community to oppose the increasingly widespread use of petroleum based pesticides. One of those involved was Rachel Carson, a marine scientist, writer, activist, and popular author ("Silent Spring" 1962). Her life's work was to expose the dangers of pesticides to the natural and marine environment and explain how even tiny concentrations of pesticides in water and soil can be magnified by the natural processes of the food web into harmful or lethal concentrations in the organisms at the top of the food chain. This process is known as biomagnification. For example, in the ocean, hardly detectable levels of mercury, a metal derived from the burning of coal, mining and smelting processes, can come in contact with algae and tiny planktonic (floating) organisms which will absorb and retain the mercury. Small fish graze on the contaminated plankton and incorporate it into THEIR bodies. Over their lifetimes the small fish eat many times their weight of plankton, absorbing and magnifying the mercury concentration in their own bodies which absorb and retain the mercury. Larger fish eat many times their weight of these smaller fish and etcetera, etcetera. As a result, the top predators such as bluefish, sharks, sailfish, and the marvelous tuna, one of the top predators and premiere food fish, has mercury concentrated in its flesh. As a result, consumers are warned to eat only small amounts of tuna per month and for pregnant mothers to avoid this nutritious fish altogether. In another example, in the ocean, the general level of mercury concentration in herring, a common schooling fish or part of the "nekton" which are prey for larger fish, is often quoted as at 0.01 parts per million (ppm), while the shark, a top predator which preys on the nekton, has concentrations of 1 ppm ----or one hundred times higher.

The Fukushima disaster has released large quantities of radionucleides into the air and more recently by dumping Olympic sized pool volumes of contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean. Among them is Cesium 137 (Ce 137) or radio cesium an artificial element, a fission product unique as an element produced by man and an all too common by-product of nuclear accidents. Ce 137 is produced by fission in nuclear reactors, has a half live of thirty years, and decays by high energy pathways which make contact with it dangerous. It is highly soluble, and is chemically reactive. It moves and spreads in nature rapidly due to the fact that upon release it creates compounds which are salts which are highly soluble. Upon entering the body, radio cesium concentrates in muscle tissues. Its residence time in the body or "biological half life" is about 70 days. That is, about one-half of the cesium is eliminated over the that period. Though in nature animals continue to feed and would continually reingest cesium-contaminated smaller fish or prey animals over the two month plus period.

Though some studies suggest that the high levels of potassium in sea water, low sediment concentrations in deep water and other factors may modulate the effects of Ce 137 uptake and bioaccumulation in marine fish, there have been few definitive studies to confirm this. On the other hand several studies indicate that it does take place in the marine environment. The recent collection of fish with higher concentrations of cesium than were recorded right after the disaster and which were collected large distances from the plant site and at varying depths now more than two years after the earthquake and tsunami, suggest that bioaccumulation IS occurring. Even if the bioaccumulation process is less than expected or minimized by the characteristics of the deep ocean what effect will it have on the edible fish harvested in the Pacific? Will fish be too radioactive to eat safely? To date it is not known how much bioaccumulation will occur in the Pacific basin as a result of the Fukushima disaster and the massive release of contaminated ground water.

Thus as concerned citizens, parents, and consumers of sea food we should be wary of officials making blanket statements such as: "even three hundred tones of waste water" would be diluted to "almost undetectable levels" before reaching US territories. The NRA officials can not know that to be true. Such statements sound like words of an uncertain and frightened official, looking to push the facts and real dangers under the proverbial carpet...to save their own jobs and reputations.

Get the picture?

rjk

OBAMA IGNORES PEOPLE'S WILL IN BOTH USA AND EGYPT

Again history repeats itself. In the recent sad developments in Egypt we see how far we have drifted from our nation's basic principles. In the January revolt against the long term US-supported dictator Mubarak the US vacillated long enough for a weak democracy to emerge. Not happy with the results of the people's choice of the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Washington gave a green light for the July military coup by the generals. Al Jazzera and other journals have fully-documented how the USA secretly helped (using cash payments to demonstrators, its CIA, and ties to the Egyptian military)to topple the legitimate President Morsi, the first democratically elected president of Egypt. After Morsi's ouster, imprisonment and recent disappearance, we are faced with our government's hypocritical support for a new and ruthless military dictatorship. We watch as Washington remains silent as the military strongman General Al Sissi ruthlessly suppresses the Egyptian polity they disagree with. Washington hypocritically calls for "new elections" ignoring the fact that Mr. Morsi had just won with 52% of the popular vote only months ago..more than Obama did. We stand by silently, criminally helping undermine a nascent democracy in the Middle East. But more disquieting are the revelations of political machinations in our own nation in this affair. We see exposed in plain sight how here at home OUR government weakly acquiesces to the entrenched and powerful US defense contractors (with the aid of self-serving parochial Senators like Carl Levin) to ignore the long-established intention of Congress to prevent awarding aid to regimes which have gained power through military force, i.e. a military coup. With the nation and rest of the world watching, we see the Obama Administration in an embarrassing display, attempting to redefine in a Clintonesque manner what a "coup" is.

So in this "Egyptian scandal", we see revealed how the will of the people and sensible long term policies are undermined and weakened by the Obama Administration in both the USA and in Egypt! The whole affair in Egypt (as it appears to be directed from the offices of Washington defense contractors) is a scathing embarrassment and stain on our nation's reputation as the world's premiere democracy. We must ask, who runs this nation? The defense contractors or the people? Fully engaged in the hypocrisy and leading from behind is the Obama White House, led presumably by "the smartest guy in the room", a Nobel peace laureate and a legal scholar. One wonders with trepidation, what we can we expect from that office with one of the current crop of GOP hopefuls in Obama's place? God help us.

Get the picture?

rjk

FUKUSHIMA, FISHING DISASTER AND BIOMAGNIFICATION IN THE PACIFIC

FUKUSHIMA: FISHERY DISASTER IN PACIFIC
Lax government oversight, a too cozy relationship between the Japanese government and the nuclear power industry, and Ayn Randian style greed by Tepco the Japanese company which operates the plants, mixed with a Pacific Tsunami in 2011 to cause the nuclear disaster we know now as Fukushima Daiichi. But less is known of the fishery disaster in the Pacific that the world will have to suffer with for the next century or longer. One billion people on the Pacific Rim who depend on food from the sea will have to face the choice of going hungry, or eating radioactive contaminated fish. The key reason for the disaster: the natural process of bioconcentration in which even very minuscule levels of contaminates in the water column can be concentrated many thousands of times in the bodies of fish and plankton in the marine food chain culminate in very high levels in the top predator fish. As a result the nuclides the Japanese have permitted to seep into the Pacific will be spread far and wide over the vast Pacific, reaching the US west coast in 2017. But fish and plankton will be concentrating even low level nuclear contaminants in the top predator fish to dangerous levels before that. As a result we can expect the levels of radioactivity to INCREASE in the predator fish we favor as food over time, not decrease as we move away in time from the 2011 event.

Yesterday I came across a startling report in Le Monde. On July 10, 2013, the French daily reported that Tepco, the Japanese company which owns and operates the crippled Fukusima power plant in northern Japan, revealed a strikingincrease in levels of radioactive caesium in groundwater-monitoring wells situated between the plant and the Pacific Ocean. In three days the level of the element caesium surged to ninety times the level it had been. The information just confirmed what many have suspected, that the plant is still out of control and leaking high levels of nuclear waste into the soil below the plant and that that highly contaminated water is seeping directly into the Pacific Ocean. See extract of original article: " Japon- Fuite d'eau contaminée à Fukushima", Le Monde, July 10, 2013.

Studies estimate that the world value of wild fish landed as a result of ocean fishing is in the order of $80 billion dollars annually and more than 50% of that is from the Pacific Ocean, while the total,value in terms of jobs, supporting industries, refrigeration, boat building, tin mining ( for canned fish) packaging, transporting, and selling the fish amount to more than three times the landed value or about $240 billion dollars. (Dyck, A.J. and U.R. Sumaila. 2010. Economic impact of ocean fish populations in the global fishery. Journal of Bioeconomics. ). The Wild Salmon Center estimates that just one "species" of fish, the wild Pacific salmon, sustain a $3 billion-a-year industry and provide tens of thousands of jobs, and serve as a protein staple to millions of people in Russia, Japan, Canada and the US. The State of Alaska estimates that its Pacific fishery supports about 80,000 jobs in that state and accounts for some $6 billion dollars in revenue. Fish provide an excellent and in some nations essential source of protein to billions of people world wide. China with its 1.3 billion population harvests about 14 million tons of wild marine fish from the Pacific annually which supplements the nutrition of its citizenry. Russia harvests about 3 million tons of marine fish from this same region. While the USA takes about 5 million tons. Of that more than 50% of all U.S. landings were fish caught by trawlers in the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Ocean catch includes groundfish such as Pacific cod, flounders, hake, ocean perch, Alaska pollock, and rockfishes. Other important commercial Pacific Ocean species are salmon, halibut, Dungeness, King and Snow crab, tuna, and squid. But since the Fukushima disaster all of these species may be found to be too contaminated to be eaten safely. That spells an economic disaster and a nutritional disaster just over the horizon.

It is now about sixteen months since the tsunami and melt down of the reactors at Fukushima and reports such as that of the Le Monde piece above are the few notices of trouble over the horizon available for concerned citizens. Our press has basically ignored this issue. Reports in some Canadian journals indicate that the fish monitored for radioactivity are showing signs of having higher radiation levels in 2012 and more recently, than in the time period closer to the disaster. That is in part an indication that the plant is still dumping contaminated water into the Pacific, but of more concern is that the levels of nuclides are increasing in the top levels of the food chain more as a result of bioconcentration. The press and other media are silent on this quiet disaster. They do not want to be blacklisted by any big industry which might quit buying advertisement space. So we must ferret out the facts and come to our own conclusions.

What we do know is that caesium 137 and caesium 134 are man-made radioactive elements which were and are continuing to be released into the Pacific Ocean at Fukushima. Ocean currents carry these materials out into the Pacific where they mix with uncontaminated water. Marine scientists have found these elements from Fuskushima thousands of miles away from the plant site and thousands of feet deep in the water column. They are absorbed or ingested by filter feeding plankton and in that way get into the food chain. These substances emit dangerous radiation which, when ingested by humans, spread over the body and concentrate in the soft tissues. In high enough concentrations they kill outright. In lower dosages they will produce cancers. The substances stay dangerously radioactive for decades. (This element has a half life of about thirty years, meaning that one half of its nuclei decay away to a stable element over a period of thirty years, over the next thirty years one-half of the remaining half decays away. So after sixty years, one fourth of the original amount is still there emitting radiation, and over the next thirty years a half of that (or 1/8 of the original) decays away.....et cetera). Once ingested these elements remain in the human body for several months. There is no special threshold below which these substances are benign. No levels of radiation are "acceptable".

We must avoid them and avoid having our children and pregnant women from ingesting them.

Our fish mongers are eager to sell product (and may unknowingly or otherwise mis-label products that they want to sell). So do not depend on the fish being labeled as radioactive or removed from sale. Unfortunately, we can not expect to receive any meaningful warnings from our government. Let us be clear. Our government (a government for the oligarchs and by the oligarchs) has as its most vital concern the viability and continued profitability and survival of the fishing and other industries associated with this quarter of a trillion dollar part of the world economy. They are not concerned with the possible health problems, cancers, suffering, and early deaths of it citizenry. That is a gradual process that politicians can easily ignore or sweep under the rug, and which will take decades to expose...and document. And you can be sure that the big banks, US state governments, foreign nations, and various companies with stakes in the fishing industry will lie, hide evidence, and distort the facts to protect those industries, as did the tobacco industry, in league with several US governments of both parties for some thirty years or more, to hide the truth regarding the dangers of smoking.

So begin tapering off your taste for tuna sushi, for Chilean Sea Bass, for Pacific cod, and Alaskan salmon and for a host of other Pacific wild fish. No one will tell you how radioactive they are. You can thank the nuclear power industry, General Electric who designed and built those plants, Tepco in Japan who mis handled the disaster, the Japanese government who failed to regulate the industry, and the government agencies which promoted and continue to promote the most dangerous way to boil water and generate electricity every imagined.

Get the picture?

rjk

EGYPT AND MILITARY TYRANTS...WE SHOULD WORRY

"Instead of subjecting the military to the civil power, [a tyrant will make] the civil subordinate to the military. But can [he] thus put down all law under his feet? Can he erect a power superior to that which erected himself? He [can do] it indeed by force, but let him remember that force cannot give right." --Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774.(*) ME 1:209, Papers 1:134

In an earlier blog ( see below) I outlined the foreign and domestic political situation Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohammad Morsi, had to deal with with when he was elected a year ago. In summary his problems were: the Hosni Mubarak old-guard entrenched and barricaded by decades in power remained a powerful force, while the military and the secret service, the real power in the nation, worked to undermine the new president. From abroad Morsi also faced opposition from the White House which had decided that this PhD from the University of California steeped in ideas of "democracy" was too independent and unlikely to be a pliable and complacent "partner". Washington quietly gave the green light to others in the region that he should go. Closer to his home, across the narrow Red Sea, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah was unhappy with a democratic Egypt on its western border. It feared its own suppressed Moslem Brotherhood and worried that the very concept of the Egyptian revolution might be "exported" to Saudi Arabia. Saudi money found its way into Egypt to stir up massive demonstrations.

But Morsi faced other just as intractable problems at home in the form of a faltering economy, falling gold reserves, rising unemployment, a fragile political coalition, and a powerful, outsized military establishment with potentially traitorous ties abroad.

The Egyptian economy is long burdened by many "give aways" in the form of food, and fuel subsidies. These were instituted under Mubarak to keep the populous quiet, but which weakened the economy. In the end it turned out to be the heavily subsidized military which was Morsi's greatest threat.

The Egyptian military, the largest subsidized component of the economy, is underwritten by a powerful foreign nation. Each year the generals pocket a hefty $1.3 billion dollars in "welfare" from the USA. These funds, totaling over $70 billion dollars over the years, are a form of insurance-payment designed to keep the army's leadership in line with US interests, and, as well, to help maintain the military as a controlling element of the the Egyptian state. If the US is spending $1.3 billion per year, it wants to be sure it's paying the "top guy", and is getting its money's worth by making sure the top guy stays on top. These US funds were also a handy lever to insure that the Egyptians keep the peace with Israel, and maintain the critical sea-lane through the Suez Canal. Those seventy billions of dollars were well-used in Egypt to pamper the generals, who buy spiffy gold-encrusted uniforms, up-to-date US military hardware (but not too up to date!), and get to go on expensive jaunts abroad to US military installations, war-colleges, and camps where they are duly indoctrinated. The funds are, as well, a boon to the US arms industry, since the money can only be used to purchase American military hardware. In this way it supports and comforts burgeoning militarism on two continents. But money is fungible, and over the long decades the dollars were sidelined by entrepreneurial generals into private industry. Large amounts accrued to the Egyptian Army as investment funds for their own private businesses. It is now claimed that the military "owns" about 40% of the nation's economy. Thus, the continued flow of US funds are a significant investment in propping up elements in the Egyptian economy antithetical to democracy. The result is a weakened general economy, hindered job formation and unfair competition with independent companies which must bump shoulders with the heavily subsidized military which produces all manner of products for the market from water bottles to laptop computers.

In the end, after many unfortunate faux pas by the inexperienced Morsi and company, the powerful, entrenched military and their allies finally took down Morsi, their legitimately elected President. General Abdul Al Sissi called to give Morsi 48 hours to resign, give up all real power and accept a "nominal" presidency in which all real power resided with the generals, or they would arrest him. This was the shameful "deal" which the US Ambassador, Security Advisor Rice and President Barack Obama favored and encouraged Morsi to accept. It was a deal which would give Obama cover but turn Egypt back to despotism. Morsi decided to take a courageous stand, he gave Obama and the generals a one finger salute, forcing a take-over which all the world would see revealed as a crude power play by the powerful...a military coup. The result is that Morsi is now behind bars in a barracks near Tahrir Square. His chief aids have been rounded up as so many criminals. The generals are scouring the City with trumped-up warrants for the arrest of 300 members of Morsi's political Freedom and Justice Party. The new military despots then shut down newspapers they did not like, closed political organizations they found offensive and even arrested journalists from Al Jazeera whom they considered too "pro Morsi". Today, July 8, 2013, our US press has widely reported that the Army and Egyptian Police have "massacred" scores of peaceful sit-in pro-Morsi demonstrators, most of whom were shot in the head at close range.

The US and the rest of the free world wring their hands at the the slaughter and decry what is a clear military coup d'état. The White House has remained silent, unwilling to call the coup "a coup". Western government leaders who were complicitous with the US in helping to out Morsi are now frustrated and unhappy, having their facile ability to talk up "democracy" for third world countries turn too obviously into so much empty hypocritcal rhetoric. Here in the US, supposed leader of the "free world", we continue to conspire against "inconvienient" democracies we do not like and continue to support militarism at home and abroad....at our peril and the peril of the rest of the world. The situation in Egypt and its apparent descent into further chaos is a clear picture of what happens when we unleash the military from its civilian control. Tyranny is the result. We can not let this coup stand! We can not continue to support the despotic generals. As Thomas Jefferson so aptly stated, "....tyrants (will) make the civil, subordinate to the military. (They can do it) indeed by force, but let (them)remember that force cannot give right".

What we should remember as well, something that our own pliant press will not or can not state, is our own nation's complicity in this tragedy. We have supported the militarization of Egypt for decades. We are well-aware of how our funding has crippled their economy. We have supported the tyranny of Mubarak, and now we have underhandedly helped engineer the fall of the first democratically elected president of that nation. Our President hypocritically wrings his hands in public false despair and in private finds ways to support tyranny. We are in good part responsible for the tragedy in that region. Can we not somehow learn to be a more benign super power? Can we not somehow become a force for good in the world as our Founders certainly imagined was to be our nation's course? And too, seeing the chaos in Egypt, should we also worry that our own powerful standing army and the huge military industries which are in league with it are a danger to our own freedoms?

Get the picture?

rjk