rjkspeaks

HUMAN HEIGHT AND DARWINIAN SELECTION

2012-02-11T09:07:00.000-08:00

HUMAN HEIGHT AND DARWINIAN SELECTION

or In defense of the hobbit.

Perhaps this idea struck me when, after purchacing two expensive tickets, my wife and I found ourselves seated behind two quite tall and large young gentlemen at a Manhattan theater. Crane our necks this way and that as best we could, we still could attain only a partial view of the stage, framed by a the men's big shoulders and heads. When we stood at the finale to applaud the actors, they stood too, completely blocking our view. We clapped as we stared at the rumpled butts of these young men, and might have as well been standing facing a brick wall. As we left the theater, I found myself rubbing shoulders (well not quite, perhaps my shoulders were rubbing their elbows) with these two offending over-sized young men, and others who were on average much taller than we were. I have come to the conclusion that in comparison to the present population of young people I am seriously height challenged.

As a man with more than seven decades of observational experience, I can well remember times more than six decades in the past, in the late 1940s. In those days, a guy like me at 173 cm, 1.73 meters, 68 inches, or five-feet-eight-inches tall was just about "average" height. At maturity, I was taller than my paternal grandfather by a few inches, and about an inch taller than my own dad. Pap'a, my maternal grandfather was an inch or so taller than I.

In school, true, I never seriously considered playing basketball, but did shoot hoops with the other kids on the park court and played quite well. I was average height, but not in "tail end" of the bell curve on height that commanded the respect of the neighborhood toughs. To make up the difference I needed strong, fast legs to get me out of altercations with the bigger kids, some of whom in my Brooklyn neighborhood were serious bullies. For fast get-aways, my smaller frame and shorter but strong legs were a distinct advantage. I generally out-distanced the big guys in sprints. But I knew I had to put some distance between me and them fast. To facilitate these escapes, I studied and memorized the terrane and with my size and height I was particularly good at hopping hedges and slipping through breaks in board fences--where they could not easily follow. Thus, in this way, I adapted to being in the middle of the height curve as a boy.

But as I moved on into maturity and middle age I entered into a wider world, where other factors counted more than just how high your eyes were above the ground. Important too, thankfully, was intellectual attainment, sucess, wealth, status, etc. Height decreased in importance during this period of my life. It was OK to be just average--at least in this category. Who cared? But as time went on, and new generations sprung up around me, I have been forced to conclude that among these new cohorts my just-average height-status has clearly diminished into sub-average. Was it me shrinking, or these youngsters getting taller? Now in my seventies, I have had to admit that I am short. Of course, I have shrunk a bit as well, due to the many years of unrelenting gravity, pounding the turf as a habitual jogger, and insisting on walking and carrying a bag to play golf. Over time gravity has compressed those elastic tissues in my skeletal system. But that is expected.

The medical study of stature, termed auxology, is grounded on the assumption that height is and has long been considered one of the characteristics of good health. This assumes that wellness and adequate nutrition and health-care may promote greater stature. But perhaps there is more to it than simply good care and nutrition.

According to my own personal observations the world around me is getting taller. But are human populations actually increasing in stature? And if so, what are the causes? Is there an ongoing spurt in height as a result of a plentiful supply of food in modern industrialized nations? Or is it more than that?

That the stature of populations are in fact altering has been documented by several studies. One of particular interest is that of Professor Joerg Baten an economist and economic historian of Tubingin University, Germany who achieved distinction on his study of the long-term development of human capital and living standards (See: Joerg Baten* "Global Height Trends in Industrial and Developing Countries, 1810-1984: An Overview.") In this report, Professor Baten, and his colleagues at Tubingin University used anthropometric historical means to document changes in human height (measured as you would expect as the distance from the top of head to bottom of feet) from 1810 to 1984. Professor Baten's goal was to use height as a measure of long-term human living standards.

Data included in the report reveal that in almost all countries examined by Baten's study, the trend in human stature is upward. Populations world-wide are growing taller by the decade. Baten (no date) includes a graph which reveals that world average heights (for men) climbed from about 160 cm (5' 3") in 1810 to just about 170 cm (5'7") in 1984, or about ten centimeters or four inches in 174 years (174/20 = 8.7) or an average increase of four inches in nearly nine generations. That is a rate of increase in height of approximately one-half inch per generation. The rate of change that one might actually notice over a human lifetime of between three and four generations. In regard to male heights in industrialized nations (where the population was likely to be less often stressed by food scarcity and presumably have better nutrition and health care) Baten's data indicates that male heights rose from about 166 cm (5' 5") in 1810 to above 178 cm (5'10") in 1984. That is about five inches in nearly nine generations and supports the concept that better nutrition plays a role in height. Baten's data also indicates that only two populations he tabulated do not follow the general upward trend, South Asia and South East Asia populations. Both of these groupings either remained nearly steady over that time or rose only slightly.

Some of Baten's conclusions are the following: Ignoring medical conditions such as gigantism and dwarfism, human populations which share a genetic background and are found in similar environmental circumstances appear to demonstrate similar stature.

Also: Alterations in nutrition caused by extreme poverty, long term warfare, and climatic disruptions may alter adult stature.

Baten also examined the relationship of human height to nutrition and to the gross national product of the states in which the data was collected. And he found that these factors do show some level of correlation.

Baten's data supports my personal observations that our youth are taller than in the past. But my hypothesis is that the changes noted are not simply related to better nutrition or health care (or being umped up with vitamiins) but is a classic case of Darwinian selection. My reasoning is thus: Over thousands of generations human-kind has been subjected to the stress of normal seasonal scarcity (winter food shortages), droughts, as well as prolonged famines related to climatic and other natural variations. Over time, human populations slowly evolved to adapt to nutritional stress by reductions in size and height. Smaller individuals were more likely to survive famines and food stress and live on to reproduce. These, naturally selected, individuals gave rise to generations of smaller, shorter more-efficient individuals better adapted to an environment with uncertain food sources. But times change and besides physical change humans are capable of social and intellectual change. Thus it was that during the Roman and Persian empires and the islamic agricultural revolution of the 8th century as well as industrial revolution of the mid 18th century man discovered new, crops, more-effective ways to produce food and more importantly new sources of energy which changed the human energy balance. No longer did man live on the knife-edge between abundance and starvation. In the post-industrial revolution, when food supply has remained constant for many generations and in some nations the food supply is actually an over abundance, due to cheap energy costs, the stress of food scarcity has disappeared and the natural genetic variability of humans is able to be fully expressed with more taller individuals surviving and reproducing.

THE KUNG! SAN OF THE KALAHARI

Several anthropological studies indicate that in primitive conditions humans lived harsh lives constantly threatened by famine. In the natural state, prior to developing a settled agricultural life style, human labor and effort or caloric output had to equal the amount of calories exploited from the environment to survive and for reproductive purposes, that exploitative ability had to be slightly greater for at least some time of the year. For example, a well-known seminal study of the Kung San (Bushmen) completed in the 1960s by Richard B. Lee ("The !Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society"). Lee documents the fact that Kung women (with their children in tow) often must complete a seven-mile long walk every several days thorough the Kalahari desert to harvest enough calories from widely dispersed foods such as nuts, (mostly the common mongongo nut), roots and berries for her and her family to survive on a day to day basis. Lee calculates that the women collected the majority of the caloric component of the Kung San diet, while the men, who subsisted on the women's vegetal foods for most of the month, using their hunting prowess and the calories provided by the women to provide the small amount of high quality fats and proteins from their hunting forays on an infrequent basis of about once or twice a month. These small additons of meat were critical for survival. To survive in the harsh Kalahari the !Kung San were under constant natural selection pressure. Smaller individuals were more likely to survive periods of drought and food scarcity. While taller more robust individuals were more likely to be weakened by food shortages and were less likely to survive and more likely to succumb to disease. The result was a diminutive race, only 147cm (4ft 10 in) in stature. Larger and taller individuals would not be able to sustain themselves on the widely dispersed and low caloric content that is exploitable from the Kalahari.

THE CASE OF EDGAR EVANS

The interesting case of Petty Officer Edgar Evans of the Robert Falcon Scott Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole in 1911-1912. Edgar Evans was one of the five men Scott chose to accompany him on the final leg of the ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. Scott chose Evans as one of his five companions probably mostly for his height and girth. He was described as a "huge, bull-necked, beefy man...running to a bit of fat", Evans was taller and heavier by far than his co-explorers. The five man team including Evans reached the Pole on January 17, 1912 to find there a tent with a note in it of the Roald Amundsen Expedition, the rival Norwegian team of explorers who had beat the Scott team there by a mere 33 days.

The return trip back to base camp was a desperate, depressing affair with the knowledge of their failure to be first to the South Pole weakening the will and spirit of the team. The weather turned on them as well. On the way back, their plight became desperate when they lost their way in a storm and missed one or more of their previously deposited food caches. The men were forced to severely ration their food on the return trip. Each night, Scott divided the scarce rations into six equal parts. Unknowingly, due to his disproportionate size relative to his co-companions, Evan's portion was inadequate to meet his greater caloric needs. Providing him with only an equal share, his team mates were in fact slowly starving Evans to death. With his size, he needed many more calories than they did. His one-sixth portion was not sufficient to sustain him and he slowly deteriorated both physically and mentally. During the arduous descent of the Beardsmore Glacier, Evan's condition delayed the team which had to make at least nine miles per day based of the food supplies they had. Evans, often complaining of hunger, and while suffering from low blood sugar and mental disorientation, he critically failed to properly cover his body. The exposure resulted in severe frostbite on his face and hands. In his famine-induced weakened state he stumbled into a crevasse and suffered a mild concussion. He soon became too weak to travel and collapsed on the 16th of January, and died the next day --17 January 1912. Evan's size, which Scott thought would be an asset to the team's effort was in fact a fatal deterrent in circumstances where food was scarce. His body simply required much more calories than his co-explorers...calories that were not available to him--as a result he was the first to succumb to starvation. The team struggled on until March 29, 1912 when, only eleven miles or about a day's march from their base camp and food, they too succumbed to starvation.

HUMANS WERE UNDER CONSTANT SELECTION FOR SIZE

Through almost all of human history, people lived on only the bare minimum caloric intake. Prior to the development of labor-saving technology and agriculture advances human labor was capable of only providing a bare existence. For thousands of years humans survived on just enough calories to survive but no more.

Like all other animal populations humans for thousands of years lived on the knife edge between feast and famine. Each year during the winter when food became scarce, famine stalked the land. Those who did not consume sufficient calories, weakened, their immune systems failed, and they were more subject to disease and were more likely to succumb to the disease and die. As in the case of Edgar Evans, when food stocks declined, it was the smaller, shorter, more lithe i.e. more "efficient" sized humans which were more likely to survive over the winter. Taller larger individuals whose mass required greater numbers of calories suffered disproportionately during times of scarcity. Over time, these food scarcities tended to favor more efficient size individuals who would be more likely to survive the winter famines, or as in the case of the Kalahari Kung! The vagaries of climate and natural scarcity in a harsh region of the earth.

FAMINE--THE CAP ON HUMAN GROWTH

Thus natural annual fluctuation in food availability and quality, and resulting famine kept a cap on human size. Humans tended toward the size that the environment in which they lived permitted. In the nutrient deficient Kalahari, humans were slowly selected to be diminutive. While in more nutrient rich northern Europe the species attained greater height. But as the pressure-cap of famine abated or was removed during the technological revolutions of the industrial age and the age of coal and oil those restrictions on size slowly altered.

TECHNOLOGY REMOVES PRESSURE ON SIZE

As technology aided human production of food, annual famines decreased and eventually disappeared from the scene. Today rather than the threat of famine, food production and excess availability due to the wide availability of coal, oil and other fossil fuels which have supplanted animal and human labor, have advanced to the point that the incidence and threat of famine and food scarcity is gone. (Today, the threat is of too much food rather than too little. Obesity has arisen as the most severe thereat to health rather than famine. Part of the obesity problem is that in the past times of famine humans evolved physiological adaptations to scarce food supplies which increased their food efficiency. They evolved to be food efficient. During periods of food surplus these individuals are predisposed to store fat and become obese.) The evolutionary pressures which had kept a cap on human size have been removed and the human gene pool continues to produce phenotypes of larger individuals with similar frequency as in the past, but, absent famine and annual periods of scarcity, these individuals are able to grow to maturity and reproduce.

The result is that old guys like me claim to see more tall people than they had before. It's true, but disconcerting to average height individuals who have to keep craning their necks upward to speak to the young inefficient giants. We older "hobbits" are proud to be the result of thousands of years of natural selection. We are the efficient ones, that use up less oxygen, less food, and need fewer yards of fabric and leather to cover our nakedness. With the coming crunch of shortages in resources as our world population tops seven billion (this year) and our food, air, water and other resources get scarce, you big fellas will be all looking back at us and giving us credit for being a more "green" and more efficient-sized form of human. And I'm sorry to say by that time, most of us "just average" sized folks will be gone from the scene.

Get the picture?

rjk

AMERICA'S TITANIC--THE GREAT RECESSION OF 2007

2012-02-08T11:25:00.000-08:00

THE GREAT RECESSION--AMERICA'S TITANIC DISASTER

ECONOMIC INJUSTICE and SOCIAL CHANGE

April 15 of this year will be the 100th anniversary of the tragic Titanic disaster. Thinking about that event (and perhaps the popular British TV series Downton Abbey, in which the Titanic plays a significant part) I was struck by the similarities between the sinking of the great ship in the early 20th century and its impact on the years that followed, and the Great Recession of the early 21st century. Both man-made tragedies came at watershed moments in the history of their respective nations and each epitomized the errors of the age, poor judgement, underlying social injustice, and inequality of wealth-distribution.

In England, the early 20th century was a period of vast social, political and economic upheaval. By the time of Queen Victoria's death in 1901, the UK industrial advantage was in decline and other nations such as Germany and the US had their own competing industries. The world was a more competitive place for the English worker. The nation began a period of slowed economic growth which was to have dramatic and far ranging effects on its social system, politics and economy. The Boer War had just ended. New technology and inventions such as the light bulb, first commercial radio transmissions, the automobile and the new assembly line invented by the Ford Motor company which produced them, gave rise to a sense of optimism in the future and the inevitability of technological advance. Across the Channel in Europe, political and social discontent were the seeds which sprouted radical political movements such as socialism and communism. These movements reverberated around the world. In England, Lloyd George champion of the English working man was just beginning a long career of fostering the English system of social justice and welfare, which were in part designed to blunt the force of the more radical political solutions to economic injustice growing in central Europe, Germany and Russia.

It was with these circumstances as background, that on the night of April 15 1912, the largest, fastest, most luxurious passenger ship in the world, sailing on its maiden voyage and built to be "unsinkable" sank ingloriously in the cold Atlantic just less than 400 miles southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The"Titanic'" named after the Titans (the twelve Greek gods of mythology) who in modern times have come to symbolize great size, but for the Greeks these gods had other characteristics. Names often do have deeper meanings and subtext significance. The Titans, were reputed to be the progeny of Gaea and Uranus. As to the name, some scholars suspect the word "Titan" may be derived from the Greek "temno" (to stretch) for according to Hesiod, the Titans "stretched out their power outrageously" (Hesiod, Theogony (207-210 BC).

The event, in which 1,517 perished, was an inglorious end to a luxurious ship. But as a manifestation of British engineering, British naval power and British society (for almost all of the passengers were of that nation) it was a symbol and microcosm of that state. The foundering of this Titan which "stretched" its power outrageously, also coincided with the end the age of opulence and optimism and the outmoded concepts of a rigid class society which spawned it, and which had obscured and submerged the social unrest, injustice and discontent of large swaths of the British population.

The vessel itself in its size, opulence, and on-board societal patterns epitomized the inflated and perhaps unjustified confidence in technology, the strictly stratified and unjust social system and outmoded concepts of the early 20th century, as well as the excess, opulence and luxury of the age. The ship was huge, (the largest in the world at the time) nearly 900 feet long, and with over 90 feet of beam and a gross weight of 46,330 tons. It's draft was nearly 35 feet. The designers included nine decks within its over 175 feet of height from keel to its four great funnel tops. Three huge bronze propellers pushed it through the water at a maximum speed of 23 knots or about 26 miles per hour. It could carry 3600 passengers (and crew) in three classes, but on its maiden voyage it had only 2,453 men women and children. On that fateful cruise there were 833 passengers in First Class suites and cabins, in Second Class: 614, and 1006 people occupied its Third Class cabins. Its life boat capacity of only 1200, was about half of its passenger capacity, and notably with none apparently for its sizable ship's crew, servers and staff. Its technology was at the zenith of its period. The vessel was epitome of all that was to exemplify British excellence. Its upper class facilities were the ultimate in luxury and opulence of the age. The first class section had a lending-library, a swimming pool, a huge barber shop and coiffure parlors for first class women, a gym, squash court, Turkish bath, and verandah cafe. The Cafe Parisien served French haut cuisine. A one way ticket (according to Wikipedia) would cost a first class passenger about $31,000.00 dollars in today's currency.

The vessel, as is well known, hit an iceberg and sunk within a few hours. After the disaster, reports of the crew and survivors, and government inquiries underscored the ugly facts concerning the nature of British society of that time. It clearly exposed the injustices and hypocrisy of Britain's stratified society. When the British press published the survivor lists it clearly showed how the rich and powerful in first class survived the disaster in far greater numbers than the more numerous bourgeoise and working class passengers in second and third class. The physical arrangement of the vessel with all the life boats situated on the upper, first class deck, where the fewest but "most important" passengers were, was one cause for the skewed survival pattern. The lifeboats, too few for all passengers, were found adjoining the first class cabins and suites and easily available for the women and children of these privileged few. But the third class passengers in the lower decks had to climb long, crowded and confusing stairwells and passages to reach the lifeboat deck----only to find that the boats we filled with others and many of them had already been lowered.

As the story of the tragedy played out in public press, the British nation had a clear, unsettling and unflattering view of itself. For the Titanic was a microcosm of British engineering, technology, and its rigid class-structured society. The privileged classes survived while the others went down with the ship into the cold Atlantic. The event crystallized in the minds of the disenfranchised and under-privileged of society and made it clear where they stood in importance in their homeland. The tragic foundering of the great ship which occurred off the coast of Halifax was a clear expose of what would happen in a national disaster to the lower classes of British society on the larger ship of state Britain tethered off the coast of France. That national perception gave the nation's underclasses pause...and soon ushered in new ideas concerning British social patterns and mores. The Titanic sinking acted as a stimulus which was to initiate drastic changes as a result of these revelations. Some of the developments the labor movement, greater impetus to improve social justice, men's suffrage and women's suffrage and the end of the power of the House of Lords to block progressive legislation.

The USA of the early 21st century, sailed forth on its own Titanic, the great financial ship of state which was like the Titanic new, huge, and totally a US product. It was based on new technology and had the complete and utter confidence (unfounded) in its continued safe sailing. As did the Titanic disaster, and its aftermath, the Great Recession in 2007-2010 occurred near the end of a two long, unnecessary and debilitating wars, at a period of rising inequality in incomes, and when the US nation was experiencing a flush of unrestrained irrational financial ebullience. The financial growth was fueled by increased business efficiency derived from new electronic technology, cheap labor from immigration, and increased numbers of women in the workforce, and development of complex securities known as derivatives (most importantly the mortgage-backed security). This latter derivative, was, as was other such "paper" assets, bundled together as "collateralized debt obligations"into more complex security offerings, but considered a boon to investors since this species of paper served to disperse risk over a large cohort and thus would (theoretically) decrease risk to individuals. Banks and other financial institutions eager for the rich financial rewards from these implements lobbied heartily to keep such securities free of government regulation. As a consequence, the shortcomings and weaknesses of derivatives were never adequately assayed. In fact, since mortgage backed securities were traded widely world-wide and were unregulated, their chief weakness was that their risk could not be accurately assessed. This fact led to disaster and greater global insecurity (when the housing bubble that these securities helped to create---burst and the economy collapsed). Greed of banks and institutions fed the growth bubble causing many to sell mortgages to sub-prime lenders. Eventually, these sub-prime mortgages (bundled in with good securitized debt) would constitute as much as a third of the total world collateralized debt. These high risk securities were spread far and wide across the world. Banks were not able to assess how much actual "junk" bonds were in the assets they had purchased.

But we have surged far ahead of our story. Prior to the crash of 2007, and until that time optimism was was the watchword of the day. Growth was seemingly assured and investors burbled about the economy continually expanding. The nation's low interest rates were controlled and maintained by a complicitous Fed, kept the view of business future bright and cheery. Some claimed that we had "mastered the business cycle" with deregulation and free, unfettered global markets.

But as in the Titanic disaster, the US ship of state sailed on unmindful of the hazards ahead or the weaknesses and injustices within its system. It failed to recognize the dangers of unrestricted and unregulated greed, or the growing inequality of income and wealth. Or of the fact that middle class workers, with stagnant incomes were increasingly using cheap interest rates to leverage up funds from the equity they had in their homes. Here too the globalized economy and one foreign nation in particular, China, which kept the value of its currency low and pumped out cheap products for the US domestic market added fuel to the fire as it worked in lock step with the Fed and the US government to sustain the unsustainable. Low wages, stagnant incomes forced families to send spouses and younger members into the workforce. People were working longer hours for the same pay and for decreased benefits. If a child needed support for college, a loan taken out on house equity might paper-over the shortfall in funds for tuition. If one's roof leaked, an equity loan could be secured to pay for it. The result was growing national debt. All of these economic weaknesses were masked by an irrational optimism and faith in the "new" unregulated economy. The US nation's Titanic. The nation kept spending and buying houses, paper assets and commodities at higher and higher prices while it kept partying on the ship of state which was set on a collision with an unseen mass in its path.

As in the Titanic disaster, when the "survivor-lists" of the 2007-8 disaster were published, America's middle-class and workers were faced with the facts regarding the aftermath and government response to find that all the big bankers and financiers and their political facilitators got into the "life boats" safely. Once ensconced, they commanded the Bush and Obama crew to quickly shove them off so that as the ship went down they would not be unduly rocked about by the turbulence caused when the big vessel actually slipped below the waves. They had the ship's crew row them to shore safely, and were reported all doing extremely well. Many had climbed out of their lifeboats with massive bonuses and, ignoring the faults of the old "Titanic" these wise investors immediately began rebuilding a sister-ship called the "Olympic" which was (some considered it unwise) designed by the same old architect on the same lines and of the same size as the old vessel, whose wreck lay clearly visible to all strewn, belwo them on the sea bottom. These events were vieweed by the water-logged second and third class passengers, who watched as they floated on a sea-surface littered with debris as the one-percenters rowed away.

Nothing had changed for the top-hatted, silk-scarfed, Gran Habano-smoking, first-class set. While the second and third class passengers slowly succumbed to drowning or starvation, the elite, one-percenters got to shore where they blithely went on buying new Lear jets, diamond encrusted Stauer Graves watches, Roger Vivier shoes for their ladies, and Delaware-sized estates in South America.

Soon the financial fires in the boilers were burning again and the Olympic, which now served only first class passengers (all lower decks were vacant) was launched and set sail again. It began its cruise on a smooth moon-lit sea, its bow-wave pushing through a sea, scattered with debris of the old Titianic, and the helmsman steered his unchanging rightward course, unmindful of small clusters of determined survivors still clinging to barnacle encrusted, made-in-China, wood crates in their path.

Get the picture?

rjk

CIA BOOBY-TRAP DRONE ATTACKS MAKE LOCAL HEROS OUT OF TALIBAN

2012-02-06T07:49:00.000-08:00

No, its not going well in Afghanistan. Two recent press reports tell of troubling circumstances in that turbulent and mountainous land, and foretell problems for our young inexperienced and uncertain President.

Reuters, (February 1, 2012) revealed the contents of a "secret" study composed by the US military at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, about a month ago. The report, prepared for NATO commanders, countered the official story-line which states according to our President and his smiling, optimistic military advisers that the Taliban are "on the run everywhere in Afghanistan". This document states instead that the Taliban are strong, motivated, united and not going anywhere. The source of the information is taken from own US military, those stationed in the war zone in Afghanistan, and is based on four thousand interviews with captured Taliban and detainees. It concludes that the Taliban are certainly not on the run. Instead they are characterized as confident, optimistic and ready to take control again once the US led forces leave. I lived through a lot of US wars (sorry to say), WWII, Korean , Vietnam, etc., etc., etc., in each instance, I learned the truth only long after the fact. In times of war one becomes very circumspect, experience teaches us that the military and our political leaders often lie, or at very least were prone to twisting the truth to meet their own political needs and purposes of the moment. The old saw stating: "Truth is the first casualty of war", is incomplete. "Truth is the first and continuing casualty of war" is more accurate. At the present time, our leaders have a political motivation to paint a rosy picture--it's an election year.

Thus based on this in-house military analysis, after eleven years of devastating war, half a trillion dollars spent on direct war costs, the loss of nearly two-thousand American troops to date, the demise of countless Afghan fighters of various hues and stripes, and the killing of uncounted, innocent Afghan women and children, we are set back to square one. We are back to where we were when George Bush led the charge into the dry, cold and dusty mountains of Afghanistan, known as the graveyard of empires. When Bush left, Obama, who campaigned as an anti-war candidate, but, upon election became fearful of that role, and took to waving the saber. He promised to get us out of Iraq ("the wrong war") and back into Afghanistan (the supposed "right war" and cradle of al Qaida) with a surge of new forces. Today, al Qaida is essentially extinct in Afghanistan, and thus our nearly one-hundred thousand troops with perhaps a 1000:1 ratio of good-guys vs Taliban had to have some reason for being there, so imperceptibly and stealthily our objective of cleansing al Qaida has morphed over the last decade, so today, we find our forces hunting and killing Taliban (as perhaps the target du jour), a group which had no bone to pick with us--before we invaded their mountainous lair.

So our Afghan war-goals are not going as planned. We are not winning, and yet there is both strong economic and political imperatives to end this tragic episode and get out. But no-one, especially a weakened, election-year president, wants to be the one to blow the "retreat" on the nation's bugle and be blamed for a "lost" war. Thus, we are stuck continuing to fight a war we are losing, which bleeds our wealth and blood. A war we borrow 40 cents on the dollar to pay for. So what has our President done? He has turned in desperation to a robotized air-war against the Afghans which targets supposed enemies, yet in the process kills and maims innocents. Why are the Taliban strong, united, and unbowed as the Bagram report indicates? The Americans with their drones and tendency to indiscriminate use of firepower continue to make the enemy look like local heroes.

Today, February 5, 2012, Scott Shane wrote in the N Y Times that British and Pakistani journalists members of the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalists have completed a study published in the Times of London which charges that US drone strikes--seemingly in imitation of some of the most vicious terrorist bombers--have begun to use a double whammy or booby trap kill by striking an initial target with a Reaper or Predator drone, then remain lurking in the area to fire rockets at those (innocents) who come to the aid of the injured, dead and dying. In addition, to such atrocities, local witnesses state that the drones often fire on mourners gathering for subsequent funeral processions! They are reported to have fired at any group of men who may appear armed (even if they are only carrying farming implements). Such indiscriminate use of firepower make it impossible for the Afghans to distinguish between who is more vicious, the Taliban insurgents or the Americans supported by the CIA who control the drones. Apparently, from the results of the Bagram Air Base secret-study, they have decided. Perhaps they have concluded that both are equally evil, and would rather go with the home-grown evil rather than the foreign one. With the administration's stupid and counter-productive drone attacks as our only strategy, we have lost the hearts and minds of the Afghans (can you blame them?) and with that loss--we can not win. What we are doing now with our high-tech drone attacks is simply senseless killing--often, too often, of innocents and children. Such killing must stop!

According to Scott Shane's report in the N Y Times, Obama himself has approved of over 260 drone air-strikes on Afghan targets in the last three-plus years. That is on-average a drone strike about every four days. According to journalists and observers on the ground, these strikes have killed many, many Taliban (which our young, insecure, military-dominated and uncertain President often brags about), but he says little about the fact that his CIA has killed between 300 to 500 innocent civilians. That is roughly one, or two, (or more) civilians for each strike. Sadly sixty (60) of those civilians were children! President Obama (and the stooges that play at killing at the joy-stick-controls of the drones) will have the lives of these sixty kids on his conscience..or should have. Perhaps one day the World Court of Justice will revoke his unearned Peace Prize and finally be constrained by his continued inexplicably inhumane actions in Afghanistan to charge him with war crimes.

But let's look at a tragedy closer to home. Recall the encomiums and heart-felt press reports concerning the tragic, violent shooting death of lovely nine-year old Christina Green. She was killed by a deranged Arizona gunman on a maniacal rampage who killed five others and grievously wounded former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Little nine-year-old Christina was a young American, but was no different, no more innocent, no more full of youthful potential, and deserving of life than any one of those sixty Afghan kids who were unintended targets of CIA drones. The loss of her life was widely reported, but there is hardly a sentence written in the press about the sixty Afghan kids. Ironically, Obama honored the memory of that lovely little girl and the anguish of her parents in his State of the Union address. But the death of those sixty kids was just as much a valid part of the State of the Union address as young martyred Christina's was, but President Obama was silent and dumb on the sixty kids of similar age and innocence who died by American-made technology and hardware in Afghanistan just as violently and tragically. We too remain dumb and uniformed. And few in the major press or media made mention of it. Is the reason that this is some special hierarchy of innocent children...I think not.

What are Obama's objectives for this nation? Has he thought of anything beyond reelection? Is he attempting to out-macho Bush, so as to impress the Republicans? One must ask of him, who is in control of his CIA? And finally, who of us would agree with the apparent weird and irrational cost-benefit analyses formulated within the White House, that somehow permits our CIA to set up booby-trap drone strikes which kills innocents and children in Afghanistan? What is wrong with us?

Get the picture?

rjk

ZUBAYDAH, KIRIAKOU, OBAMA:VICTIMS, TORTURERS, WHISTLEBLOWERS

2012-01-29T12:32:00.000-08:00

THE TORTURE OF ABU ZUBAYDAH,

AND THE PROSECUTION OF KIRIAKOU,

A CASE OF DUAL INJUSTICE

Why does Obama continue to shield law-breakers in the Bush Administration?

In Pakistan's border provinces, in 2002, a Saudi Arabian national of Palestinian descent, one Abu Zubaydah was reported to be hiding at a safe-house in a rural area. The CIA knew that their target had left his native land to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. They also had information that he was in charge of a training camp in the district. What they did not know was that during the Soviet-Afghan conflict Zubaydah had suffered a serious head wound which left him speechless and with near total memory loss. Though he was considered a top official of al Qaida by the Bush Administration, at the time, now we know that because of his head injuries and mental limitations Zubaydah was considered be worthless to al Qaida and he was never a member of that organization. In fact Dan Coleman, the FBI's senior expert on al Qaida, stated in 2009 that Zubaydah's importance was exaggerated by the Bush White House and that Zubaydah was only a "safehouse keeper" with mental problems, who "claimed to know more about al-Qaeda and its inner workings than he really did." (the quotes are from Wikipedia's Abu Zubaydah page)

During the CIA-insurgent firefight at the safe-house, Zubaydah was again severely wounded. After the final rush into the compound by CIA and Pakistani agents, the Pakistanis found a grievously injured Zubaydah, having been shot in the groin, stomach and thigh. They tossed the insensate man into a pick-up truck with the dead and wounded, where he would have died from his untended wounds. But the chief CIA agent, John Kiriakou, who led the assault on the safe house, recognized Zubaydah by his appearance and by the fact that a search of his pockets revealed he carried bank books from Saudi and Kuwaiti institutions rather than cash or untraceable funds as simple foot-soldier might have. Kiriakou, assuming that the near-dead man would be valuable if he could be kept alive, made sure his wounds were tended by the Pakistanis, then he flew in a surgeon from Johns Hopkins in the United States to further treat the man's serious wounds so that he would survive his passage out of Pakistan to a place where he could be adequately interrogated. When Kiriakou reported the capture to his superiors they were elated. Abu Zubaydah was considered a top-ranking al Qaida operative by the Bush administration, and a big catch for Kiriakou and the CIA. John Kiriakou was lauded for his work at the safe house fire-fight and for his investigative prowess in recognizing the captive's importance, and actions to save his life.

Unfortunately, Kirakou was disappointed when he was subsequently passed up for promotion. Zubaydah's supposed importance was based on the limited knowledge the USA had of him at that time, and the fact that President Bush was in need of some positive news about progress being made against al Qaida. Thus this badly wounded man, still suffering memory loss from his old head injury was, without further investigation, subsequently moved from Pakistan and sent on to severalnCIA "black" sites in Thailand, Poland, Garcia Diego, Guantanamo and elsewhere where he was subjected to fourteen different types of torture as well as water-boarding. (There is no question about whether Zubaydah was tortured, the descriptions of the series of "harsh" treatments he was subjected to makes disgusting reading.) It is well known that this prisoner was subjected to water boarding 83 times.

At the time, the actual transportation (rendition) of a US captive from a battle field to a place where that person would be tortured during interrogation was strictly illegal in the USA---that is until just before Zubaydah's rendition to Thailand. To facilitate this rendition, two of George Bush's attorneys in Washington, John Yoo and Jay Bybee conjured up legal cover, which, for the period of the Bush presidency, allowed the President and his team to claim that what they were doing to Zubaydah during his rendition and torture -was "legal".

About this time, back in Washington, top US officials including President Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Ashcroft having learned of Zubaydah's capture met to discuss the question of how to interrogate him to get the maximum amount of information. The setting for the meeting was a short period after 9-11, the President and his team were eager for any information about al Qaida, however tenuous and whatever means was used to obtain it. The CIA had proposed a series of "enhanced interrogation techniques" for Zubaydah which included forced nudity, loud music, sensory deprivation, temperature extremes, beatings, physical stress positions, such as forcing individuals into a "cramp" box where they could not stand upright or lie down, as well as water-boarding (a form of slow asphyxiation, using water to close off the passage of air to the lungs). Government documents now reveal that all these government officials (and high level Congressional leaders) were briefed about the proposal. Finally, with all of Bush's team in agreement, his national security advisor at the time, Condi Rice, finally told the CIA that the so called "harsh treatments" or "enhanced interrogation methods" we're acceptable to the President and they could go ahead.

Later, Dick Cheney, stated, "I signed off on it, so did the others." But John Ashcroft, the Attorney General at the time, perhaps concerned with the way the administration was running rough-shod over international agreements and the nation's laws warned: “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”

[An interesting comment President Bush made at the time is illustrative of his thinking. A few days after Bush signed off on the CIA's torture proposal, Bush eagerly asked of one of his advisers "What information did you get out of him?" The advisor reported that little new information had been forthcoming, and the reason offered was that Zubaydah's unhealed wounds were causing him great pain and he had been given pain killers. (This may have occurred during the time he had been placed in a "cramp" box where his bent over positions for long periods had caused his unhealed wounds to open and to bleed again.) The interrogators claimed that the pain killers made Zubaydah drowsy and were slowing the interrogation process. Bush responded: "Pain killers? Why give him pain killers?" Zubaydah's drugs were immediately withdrawn and the harsh treatments continued. ]

Mr Ashcroft was perfectly right. History will not judge the Bush inner group of torturers kindly. Bush, Cheney, Tenet, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice and Ashcroft all signed off on a process too horrible to envision and totally alien to American traditions of behavior--we are not torturers. Whatever various euphemisms they coined and used to describe it, "harsh treatment" or "enhanced interrogation" what was done to Zubaydah was torture. The old saw, stating : If it walks like a duck, quacks and flies like a duck--- it is a duck!" holds true. Today, we know (as did the vast majority of us who harbor some sense of morality and justice) that torture, aside from its moral repulsiveness, and legal prohibitions, was and remains ineffective and counter productive as a means of gathering information, and that any information "tainted" by torture is inadmissible as evidence in a trial. But then again we must recall that these people of the Bush Administration were the "great thinkers and deciders" who thought up the Bush tax cuts for the rich, the bank bailouts and the invasion of Iraq and other "boners". They are and remain an embarrassment to the USA.

The Bush administration sanctioned torture as a method of interrogation..bringing the USA down to the level of other torture states: the Nazis, Red Chinese, North Koreans, Soviet Russia and the Spanish Inquisition. History will remember them and those in the CIA and their contractors, physicians, psychologists and others who followed their illegal and immoral directions. The names Bush and all those others of his group will remain infamous like that of Dr. Josef Mengele of another age. Finally, the guilty should reflect on that ancient saying of the Greek philosopher, Sextus Empiricus (160-210 AD) "the stones of justice turn only very slowly but they grind exceedingly fine". So perhaps, like the war criminals of WW II, these criminals will worry to the end of their days if some one will come knocking on their door, with an arrest warrant from the international court.

But today, these miscreants are busily attempting to rewrite the history of their time in office, to protect their now shaken reputations. Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld have all made attempts at history-revising memoirs, but to no avail. There is too much evidence to whitewash away. They are patently guilty.

With the change of administration in 2010 one had hoped these practices of rendition and torture, the black sites, Guantanamo and the miscreants who developed this nightmare of torture cells would be exposed and punished. But the Obama Administration has continued to shield these former officials from the law. Were it not for the timidity and failure of those in the Obama White House, Bush, Cheney, Tenet, Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice, Ashcroft, Yoo and Bybee would have been condemned and perhaps be serving prison sentences rather than being free to publish their attempts at contrition an self-serving histories. Obama, and his Attorney General Eric Holder, has as he has in other areas, timidly shielded these guilty individuals from legal prosecution. The White House hides the crimes of its predecessors. Why? Timidity? Fear of reprisal?

Which brings us to the recent case of former CIA officer John Kiriakou. In the last few days the Obama Administration has proceeded with the case against former CIA officer Kiriakou who is charged with passing information, to journalists regarding the illegal torture of Zubaydah. He is also charged with providing the identity of a covert agent to a journalist, i.e. "outing" an agent (as Ambassador Wilson's wife Valery Plame was outed by VP Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby). The agent Kiriakou "outed" may have been involved in the torture of Zubaydah. Thus in this case the Obama Administration is pursuing a whistleblower while shielding wrong doers.

Here is the background on that case:

On January 23, 2012 Agence France reported that the CIA had charged John Kirakiou, former CIA agent and hero of the firefight with Abu Zubaydah, with espionage. As noted above he was the agent who "arrested a top al Qaida operative" and alerted his superiors in the CIA. But for some unknown reason Obama's White House turned its guns on this particular CIA agent. Why? Kiriakou has been charged with the most serious crime the CIA could throw at him, i.e. violation of the very rarely used Espionage Act of 1917, the very law used to convict the spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Conviction could land him in jail for 2o years. The CIA also fired his pregnant wife, who worked as an analyst for the agency.

What did Kiriakou do? First, he retired from the CIA after fourteen years and wrote a book about his experiences. This probably did not ingratiate him with his former supervisors. Second, in 2007 he made the grievous error of actually stating on ABC News in December, 2007 that Abu Zubaydah was "tortured." Whether he actually explicitlybspoke out the "t" word, rather than using the euphemism "enhanced interrogation techniques" is not important. Because he was the first CIA official to actually describe the water-boarding process in such great detail on public TV, so that even if he had not used the "t" word, any observer, even an addicted Fox News regular, would have understood that it WAS torture.

Thus had Kirikou actually tortured Zubaydah, perhaps gouging out an eye or attaching battery cables to his testicles, he would now be in the clear and would never have been indicted. Today he would not be sweating out how to pay for a top-notch defense attorney and fearing possible conviction and incarceration for 20 years. Then there is the financial impact, with his pregnant wife out of work too, both are living off their possibly meager savings. The actual torturers, their legal supporters and the former officials in government who gave the orders for torture have been consistently protected from prosecution by Attorney General Holder and President Obama. But one who was not involved in these despicable acts, but simply described what the actual torturers were doing, is the one they chose to chase down and hit with the Espionage Act. Perhaps it is because John Kiriakou, the person who has fourteen years of experience with the CIA, and was actually present when Abu Zubaydah was captured, has the credibility to speak about the subject as well as the crimes of his superiors--which he witnesed--that level of exposure is unwanted by the Obama Administration. Such an individual can do a great deal of harm to a timid administration, determined to sweep past misdeeds under the rug.

Thus former CIA hero John Kiriakou was fed to the sharks (or pushed under the bus) most likely to put a deep fear into anyone else in the CIA who might have the idea to expose wrong-doing in high places, and in the particularly embarrassing Zubaydah case.

Sadly, with this action, President Obama and Eric Holder are themselves sullied by shielding and protecting the Bush torture team. I had hoped for so much more from our young President. I had hoped for a change of course from that of the Bush Administration, but the President has only moved around the deck chairs. The ship is still on the same course Bush set. He kept much of the same Bush crew and they have continued to hold tight to the tiller. Except for some minor shifts in decor, Obama sits in the captain's chair on deck but has left the crew to mange the course and sails. Our ship of state still need a drastic course correction. But our hope that Obama will be able to make that transformation is slowing passing away like sea foam.

This case of Kiriakou underscores that fact. The President has directed his Attorney General to attack Kiriakou (a man who served his nation in his way honorably) rather than turn the power of the law and of the Presidency against those who have actually broken with our traditions, undermined our reputation as guarantors of international agreements, ignored our laws, soiled our reputations, and made hypocrites of us all. Add it to the list of disappointments, timid actions, no action, and reversals this young, intelligent and formerly promising President has rung up during his first three and a half years in office.

What we are all looking for is some sign that things will be different if he is re elected.

Get the picture?

rjk

BILL AND NEWT, WASHINGTON'S STEP-BROTHERS , BEWARE!

2012-01-25T09:53:00.000-08:00

CLINTON AND GINGRICH, TWO PEAS AT OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE SAME POD

In the 2008 slap-stick buddy-comedy "Step Brothers" with comic stars Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, Brennan (Farrell) and Dale (Reilly) are two very similar childish, spoiled, forty-year old men who still live at home with their single parents. They become step-brothers when their parents marry and unite two separate and unlike households into one. The film's often-seen promotional poster features Ferrell and Reilly posing, staring dumbly off into the distance with childish smiles on their faces in a mock brother's-pose for a family picture.

Having seen that silly, smiling-faced Step-Brothers poster, and soon after, watched the Gingrich response to his startling win at the South Carolina primary, I was struck by Newt's similarity in style, bluster, hubris and background to our former president, Bill Clinton. Newt and Bill were Washington DC's Step Brothers!

Looking back at the Clinton Administration from our present perspective from the bottom of an $18 trillion dollar hole created by the Great Recession, one's vision is barred by what today appears to us as a shining mountainous body, around which we can see little else. What looms so large for us today and blots out the true past is the presence of President Bill Clinton's budget surplus, and the remembrance of the fact that at the close of the G H W Bush years we entered into an era of financial growth (a happenstance) and expansion of which Clinton was the beneficiary. Unlike his successor, Clinton (who remains a talented politician) left office with an oft-touted budgetary surplus, an apparently sound economy, and the nation entering into what seemed a low-threat foreign landscape.

But Americans are crazy optimists and continually look back dumbly at our past, so most of us fail to recall (or ignore) the sleazy reality of those years and the deleterious effect Clinton's personal weaknesses as a leader had on the nation and its subsequent history. Forgotten or ignored by our politicians but not lost to our history books are the the facts around his personal foibles which led to an embarrassing and disgraceful impeachment, and that, rather than patriotically and honorably resigning his post (as had Nixon in an earlier time) to hand over the reins of government to Al Gore, his competent Vice President, admittedly one of the most effective and engaged VPs in modern presidential history, he chose to selfishly soldier on, as a weakened and undermined leader, having to make unpalatable deals with an emboldened Republican Party. The ultimate failure of his impeachment, left him in office leading a paralyzed and stunned nation. The episode demoralized the progressives, but stirred the independents and the Republican center and right-wing with renewed vigor and with a great determination to erase the Clinton legacy. It mobilized and radicalized the social conservative movement and led to the (questionable) defeat of Al Gore and the disastrous election of George Bush Jr.. in the following election. Some of the most serious mistakes which were to have severe consequences for our future, could be traced back to Clinton's self-serving, self-centered scandal-plagued administration and the decisions he made at that time. Signing the recall of the Glass-Steagal Act which was one of the main contributory causes of the Great Recession, is just one deed I can not forgive him for.

If your memory does not go that far back, recall that President Clinton was the first president ever to be impeached on grounds of personal malfeasance. Among his other "firsts" was that he was first to be sued for sexual harassment (and second to be accused of rape), and first to have his own legal defense fund, first to rent out the Lincoln bedroom, first to be held in contempt of court, and the first president to be disbarred from a state court and from the US Supreme Court. He also has the distinction of having the most number of friends and associates who had to take guilty pleas, and had the most number of cabinet officials of any past president to have been incarcerated for criminality. The administration was scarred by the fact that even the First lady was the subject of a criminal investigation. And as well, the administration was plagued by massive illegal-campaign-contributions cases. I bring up this unpleasant history to remind my readers of what can occur when a president has a "character issue" or a weak or non-existent moral compass, combined with much to learn about self discipline.

Circumstances now taking place in the Republican primaries lead one to look at the personal characters of some of those who have recently risen to prominence. One of these is a Clinton "step brother", former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.

Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton are two similar, childish, undisciplined, men, and like step-brothers Brennan and Dale their only differences are that they arise from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Both are erratic, arrogant, self-serving and based on their histories, patently unethical. These two men, are so similar, but from different political philosophies, they could have been the subjects of the Washington-edition of a Hollywood, remake of a comedy of manners called the "step brothers of politics".

Both men were born in the 1940s to struggling young women in out-of-the-way rural locations. Both mothers remarried and their young boys were raised by step-fathers whose names they assumed. Both were highly intelligent, talented and driven to succeed at all costs. Both seem to have had early discipline problems and lacked a dominant or prominent male figure in their early lives. Gingrich attended Emory, went on to graduate school at Tulane where he majored in history. Both Clinton and Gingrich failed to serve in the Vietnam war. Clinton was pilloried during his presidential campaign for the fact that he misled his draft board to obtain a deferment. Gingrich continued to take student deferments which kept him out of service, but did not volunteer to enlist. His motives, unlike Clinton's, were never questioned. Gingrich taught for some years, then was attracted to politics where he was elected to the House in 1978. Clinton went to University where he was a scholar and musician. Clinton finished his law degree at Yale. Both men entered politics, in the south, Gingrich from Georgia, Clinton from Arkansas. Both men had unsavory reputations as skirt chasers, which grew and intensified as their political power and opportunities for such behavior increased. Clinton was infamous for multiple affairs and long-term mistresses, while Gingrich was excoriated for extra-marital affairs and multiple marriages. Clinton at the height of his political power, was impeached as the result of an in-oval-office affair with a young female intern and for lying and obstruction of justice related to the investigation. Gingrich eventually reached the pinnacle of his career as Speaker of the House, from which, after four years, he was impeached for multiple ethical violations. He was assessed hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines as a results of his ethical lapses.

Politically, both men could not be defined by their party affiliations. Clinton was a nominal Democrat but often practiced what he termed "triangulation"which found him in many instances more in tune with the Republicans than with his own party. Gingrich was a political amoeba constantly changing form and shape and political associations. Gingrich altered his religious affiliation from Baptist to Lutheran, and finally to Catholic. Both men could be characterized as having greater interest in their own well- being and career advancement than concern for that of the public good to which they had taken an oath.

And finally' when these two men found themselves out of office, both jumped into the revolving door of Washington's main business of making big money, by selling one's past contacts and connections to the highest bidder doing business in Washington. Both used their government knowledge and associations (and as a former President, Clinton used his foreign as well as Washington connections) to put themselves into the 1% income income-net wealth category by becoming "consultants and influence peddlers" in Washington. Both men wound up as multi-millionaires.

Thankfully, Clinton's history is in the nation's past. As a gravelly-voiced white-haired senior, and busy-body private citizen, this world- investment maven can not do our political system any more harm.

But as for Newt, Clinton's Republican-family "step brother"and mirror image, he is running for office now, and presents a grave threat to the union. We must force ourselves to recall what it was like to have an undisciplined, unstable, and erratic president in office. The history is there for us to examine. The fear is that Clinton's "step brother" ensconced within the White House and mantled with the political clout and the power of the Presidency, but with Clintonian character flaws and "brotherly" behavior, could impose a harrowing eight years on the nation which would make the flawed and scandal-ridden Clinton administration look like a Sunday school. That image is a frightening one that should be avoided.

Newt, himself, as an historian, would affirm that we should learn form our past and not ignore it.

Let's not go there.

Get the picture?

rjk

THE GOLDEN RULE AS PRACTICED IN SOUTH CAROLINA

2012-01-21T12:13:00.000-08:00

THE GOLDEN RULE AS PRACTICED IN SOUTH CAROLINA

"So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, this sums up the Law and the Prophets". Matthew 7:12 (NIV)

South Carolina is deep in the Bible Belt, but one would not know it according to the response Congressman Ron Paul got when he invoked the Golden Rule during the Fox News-sponsored GOP debate on Monday. Paul responded to a foreign policy question, I recall it was on Iran, by invoking the Bible's golden rule. As we all know it states that we should treat others as we would ourselves like to be treated. That response got the crowd up on their feet in unprecedented anger and disagreement as they booed Paul vociferously for what the press and the other candidates saw as a vote-nullifying faux pas. But aside from the rude (non golden rule) behavior to a candidate who found it difficult to even complete his statement, the response reveals a great deal about the Republicans in South Carolina. One concludes that a significant group in the audience believes that we, as the world super power, are justified in punishing and attacking others wherever and however we please. Forget treating them like we would like to be treated...that suggests some kind of equality as members of the same species with similar human qualities. Perhaps the long insidious history of slavery in SC has seeped into the genetic pool in that state, making it difficult for many to raise themselves up from concepts which supports making one human group overlords over another.

Knowing something of that area, I suspect, those who booed probably profess to be life-long Christians, read the bible and religiously attend Bible class every Sunday, and bow their heads in prayer self-righteously at holy services. Then happily go out and load the bombs into B52s or man the Reaper drone controls, to drop ordinance on groups of innocent brown-skinned families as they sleep, or target and incinerate some "rag heads" working in their barren fields, and afterward these sorts may feel just fine and "christian-like" without a sense of remorse. But if some survivors of these attacks turn around, and following the writings of the very same prophets, "take an eye for an eye", then they are classed as "terrorists" and can be shot on sight, tortured, or stuffed away in a dank cell-hole to which the key is tossed away. Manifestly , these self-identified Christians in South Carolina, are unaware or unfazed by the illogic , inconsistency and repulsiveness, not to say unchristian behavior, of foreign policies they so avidly support.

One has to give Dr. Ron Paul credit. He remained unfazed, and continued courageously, and patiently on message. He was determined to indicate to the yahoos in the audience what the vast majority of the world population actually thinks about us and our willingness to bomb and kill, sometimes indiscriminately. Not the other members on the stage. They were much too much real politicians all, to even hint at the truth. They preferred to pander to the audience. One gets the sense that Gingrich, Romney, Santorum and Perry would find some way to agree with the principles expressed by Hitler's Brown Shirts if that would garner them a few more votes. Not so Dr. Paul, his message stays the same to whom he speaks and wherever he appears.

On Tuesday, appearing in Spartanburg, S.C., Ron Paul attempted to respond to his Monday-night intemperate audience. Answering a question about the US threat to impose an oil embargo on Iran, Ron said: “This is why I bring up the 'the golden rule', if we don’t want people to ban oil imports to our country, why should we do that to another country,” said Paul, adding “I don’t know why that is such a negative term for people to boo at that. ”

Being honest hurt Paul in South Carolina, where his brand of informed, consistent, and constitutional conservatism is not as popular as elsewhere. South Carolina is a poor state where there are many military bases, far too few good schools, and concentrations of former military families (with understandable biases and preformed ideas) who have chosen that state to retire in. But Paul 's message rings clear in other more progressive places in the nation. It's refreshing to know that even a libertarian conservative like Congressman Ron Paul can see the error of our foolish ways overseas. More power to you Congressman. Keep up the good fight. This nation needs to continue to hear your message throughout the coming campaign. Perhaps it will even help to put some timber up the back of Democrats in high office.

Get the picture?

A SANE IRAN FOREIGN POLICY

2012-01-16T09:17:00.000-08:00

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MODERN IRAN

AND OUR CULPABILITY FOR THE PRESENT STALEMATE

AND A PLEA FOR A SANE POLICY

HISTORIC THREADS WHICH GO BACK TO 1953

In the working class neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York where I grew up during the years following WWII, the kids on my block replayed the major battles of WW II over and over again---in the empty lots scattered through our community. The post-war recession of the 50s left many vacant building plots in our part of the City, each had its pre-war building excavations, piles of dirt and fill, and weedy fields which we imagined as our Roman Campus Martius, El Alamein, and Iwo Jima. We fought the hated "Japs" and the "Nazees" over and over again. But before those battles, we argued strenuously among ourselves over who was going to be the "good guys". The "good guys" were by definition, ourselves, the Americans, who stood for all that was good and noblel and too were the invariable winners. But some of us--often me and some other smaller and younger kids, were forced into being the "bad guys". Our war games needed an "enemy force" and, an adversary was necessary, for the 'mericans to finally win, but we didn't like it. In those days, we knew very well who the "good guys" were. In the modern world, we can not be so sure any longer.

It's ironic that perhaps on those very days that my gang of Brooklyn boys were glorifying American GIs ad our wish to be the "good guys" in our children war games, 500 miles away in Washington, President Eisenhower and Foster Dulles were initiating actions in Iran that were to have far-reaching and long-lasting negative effects on our nation and economy and how we would perceive ourselves as Amercans.

OUR IRAN PROBLEM

In recent days, during the seeming interminal run up to our presidential elections, and when foreign affairs are discussed, we hear a great deal about Iran. On those occasions we are sure to hear the fearful sound of loose sabers rattling and much war talk from among the Republican supplicants, and similar vitriol about Iran from an uncertain White House. The latter, perhaps, is an attempt to dull the attacks of being "weak on Iran" leveled against the President by the present gang of Republicans to whom the word "moderate" is an epithet, and who proudly arrange themselves to the right of Genghis Khan on the political scale. Today, our Congressional representatives have proposed to embargo Iranian oil sales if they don't end their nuclear program, and in response, they menace us with the closure of the Straits of Hormuz. The Obama White House and Congress worry loudly about Iran achieving the technical ability to produce nuclear weapons. That is correct, the "technical ability" to produce a weapon. We know they do not HAVE nuclear weapons! Nor could they develop them in the very near future. US policy aims to prevent Iran from the technical know-how to produce nucleaR weapons. That is quite a different matter, and in this technical age probably not possible any longer. Though, in fact, in terms of international law, they, as do other nations, who are signatories of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty--have the explicit right to pursue the enrichment of nuclear fuel. Furthermore, by agreeing to that pact (unlike Israel who has not signed) they have an established right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. As part of that agreement they have opened their facilities to inspections to the UN nuclear watchdog group IAEA. So who is in the wrong here?

ISRAEL

But these legal niceties are ignored by Congress and do not satisfy Israel--the nuclear-armed US protege-state and hegemon in the Middle East (ME). That tiny nation with it's several hundred nuclear warheads and long range ballistic missiles is not in fact threatened by Iran, which has only defensive conventional weapons. Israel's massive armory is in fact what is destabilising the ME and generating the perceived need for WMD by some nations in that quarter. In the halls of Congress we often hear the case argued, that were Iran to achieve the ability to produce nuclear weapons, it would cause a "arms race in the ME". The proponents of this blather, convieniently forgetting that Israel has introduced those weapons long ago and is indeed causing that problem. It's neighbors rightly fear what it will do. It's history of occupation and expansion as well as unprovoked attacks on Iraq, Syria and Lebanon do not engenger confidence in its well-meaning future behavior. What Israel does fear from Iran's technical development is that it may have to contend with an opponent, which at some time in the future, may be able to mount a nuclear defense. Thus, it complains and whines of Iran's threat to its "existence" and openly plans and plots about a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. These latter threats are a form of coercion against the Obama Administration (can we call it blackmail?) to encourage us to stiffen our resolve to expand sanctions and perhaps engage in another hot war in the ME. (See history of our sanctions below). But their real fear is the possible loss of their position as sole nuclear power in the region. Were that to happen they would be forced to honestly seek peaceful coexistence with their neighbors and perhaps even solve the Palestinian question fairly and equitably.

OUR THREATS ARE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE

Here in the USA, since the end of the Cold War, we also are now in the habit of and making military threats. We seem to have forgotten the disaster such bluster led us into in Iraq. The latest blather of this sort targets Iran. It is common to hear our own "iron lady", Madam Clinton intoning that "we are keeping all options on the table" indicating our willingness to engage in military solutions. Under such menacing circumstances, one wonders what world leader would not wish to have a good stockpile of nuclear weapons, just as an insurance policy against the possibility of US invasion, regime change and covert attacks. Iran just has to look across the desert at what happened to its immediate neighbor, Iraq, which was subjected to a violent unprovoked invasion, ironically not because it had WMD, but very much because we were quite well assured that it was weak militarily and had no nuclear umbrella. Thus our vitriolic threats and saber rattling toward Iran only make nuclear proliferation in the region more likely not less so. But rationality and common sense are not factors that control circumstances in these cases.

SANCTIONS HURT US AS MUCH AS IRAN

For one-third of a century, since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, we have sanctioned Iran. Over the years each new administration, regardless of what sense or nonsense it made has had to prove how "hard" on it was on Iran by adding to the list. Each successive administration has ratcheted up the pressure little by little. The reasons for these executive orders and Congressional directives seem to have been lost in the mists of time. But they plainly have had little impact and certainly not had the effects that the US would like...regime change, back to a pro-American despotic lackey like the last Shah. That is not going to happen, but other bad things could result.

Here below is a brief history of Iran sanctions:

1979~After the surprise eruption of demonstration in Iran and the exile of the Shah, President Carter permitted the Shah, who was seriously ill, into the US for medical treatment. His act of kindness precipitated a rumor that the US was planning another US backed coup to reinstate the Pahlavis. In response a group of radical students took action in Tehran by invading and occupying the US embassy. They embarrassed the US by parading the embassy staff in blindfolds and holding them hostage (to prevent the rumored coup) for 444 days. President Carter responded with Executive Order: 12170, which froze about $12 billion dollars in Iranian assets (gold, bank accounts, properties) in the US. Some claim about $10 billion is still held by the US.

1984~During the Iraq-Iran War (in which Iraq was the aggressor) the US increased sanctions against Iran which prohibited weapons sales to that nation--the victim of Iraqi aggression. It also opposed any loans to that nation by the IMF.

1996~US Congress passes a complex law imposing penalties on foreign countries which invest more than $20 million dollars in Iranian petroleum resources. Later modified and eased by Presidnet Clinton.

2000~Some sanctions were eased on pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, Persian rugs and caviar in response to complaints by imort companies.

2001~President George Bush reinstates sanctions of 1996 and 2000, which had been eased by President Clinton.

2004~US Treasury rules that US scientists collaborating with Iranian scientists could be prosecuted.

2005~President Ahmadinejad is elected and he lifts suspension of the Iranian uranium enrichment program which had been in place prior to his taking office. The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) reported Iran's non-compliance with UN Security council ruling.

2005~President G.W.Bush freezes assets of individuals connected with Iran's nuclear program.

2010~President Obama signs the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act which greatly increased restrictions on Iran.

2011-12 President Obama has sharply ratcheted up threats of sanctions by signing a bill that would embargo Iranian oil products and restrict other nations from

One reason for the failure of these efforts at long term punishment and coercion is that the Chinese and Russians, and other nations, rightly, will not cooperate in our act of vengeance and aggression. They see our behavior not as reasonable ans sound foreign policy to be supported, but more as a smokescreen to satisfy a politically worrisome US domestic audience. In this act they see-the "dog" (USA) being wagged by the "tail"--the Israelis and their congressional supporters.

Besides our efforts at sanctions against Iran, there is evidence that we are also conducting a secret cyberwar and even more revolting, clandestine bombings and assassinations in which Iranian nuclear scientists are targeted. (for the most recent assassination attack see the NY Times report today, January 10-11, 2012). Our Secretary of State, Ms Hillary Clinton, swears on a stack of bibles that we had nothing to do with this last heinous assassination. If we are not involved, certainly it is the Israelis who were the perpetrators. Their goal seems to be to provoke Iran's leaders into some overt military action which could become a causus belli for the west and generate a general war that would be a momentus miscalculation for the Iranians and for the US.

IGNORANCE OF IRAN

Our citizenry, here in the USA, are virtually ignorant of the Iranian nation and of its recent history. Posing the question of why they hate us so much to either my working class relatives or professional neighbors, elicits pretty much the same responses. My golf-buddy Charley F is typical. "Ain't that the fundamentalist Islamic nation that invaded our embassy in '79? They hate us because we are free and we live good lives." or another one, "They are just envious of us and our military power." or " They want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth." "They are a pariah nation ruled by fundamentalist theocrats." and the always common response. "They are sponsors of terrorism". Ahh life is so nice and simple when you are ignorant...solutions are so easy to come by....and so dangerous.

WHY DO THEY HATE US?

As noted above, Iran has been on our enemy list since 1979. Why?

WHY THEY HATE US? A FRANK HISTORY OF OUR INTERACTION WITH IRAN

The real history of our nation's relationship with Iran is not that long, but is very revealing.

The Iranians we're of no consequence to us until about 1953 when during the Cold War we joined with the British to overthrow a legitimately elected democratic Iranian parliamentary government and replace it with a brutal dictatorship. To make matters worse, after installing our handpicked man, we sent our General Norman Schwarzkopf (father of Stormin' Norman) there to train their brutal secret police force to assure us that the new man we installed as Shah would have all the necessary means to keep a lid on any problem dissidents. That worked,for us, at least, and as long as the Shah did what he was told about his oil supply and prices we were fine friends for some quarter of century from 1953 to 1979.

But when the Shah was overthrown and our embassy invaded by Iranian students who impudently took American personnel hostage for 444 days, we did not like that much. They embarrassed us. We were not able to mount a punitive military response, that made us look weak. We did not like that. We lost the Shah who was doing our bidding and we (and our oil companies) lost the sweet deal they had and the control of the Iranian oil fields. And we didn't like that either. The Iranians got away with kicking the big guy on the block in the shins and then running away. Since that time, with those thorns festering in our side, we continued our angry vengeful relationship with Iran (viewing them as irreconcilable enemies). It is time we changed these circumstances for our own benefit, as well as for world peace. Without a drastic change of our course, the road ahead leads only to war. That would be a"catastrophe" as was stated so succinctly by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov just yesterday (January 18, 2012).

Here, below I offer some facts about Iran's recent history that we should all be aware of as responsible citizens.

THUMBNAIL HISTORY OF IRAN

Iran is a large mostly mountainous country, equal in area to that of the UK, Germany, Spain and France combined, and with a population of nearly eighty million. Iran (derived from) "Aryan" the land of the the Aryans, was the ancient Persia of the Greek historian, Herodotus (484 to 425 BC) who wrote of the Persian wars in his"Histories". Iran is one of the oldest nations, having been first united under a Persian King around 650 BC and has continued as a unified nation in some form or another since that time.

In terms of resources, aside from Saudi Arabia and Russia, Iran has the good fortune to have one of the largest reserves of oil and gas in the world. For that reason, and it's position in the middle east, close to major waterways, and also with a littoral on both the shores of the Caspian Sea and on the Red Sea (one of the great waterways of the modern world) which puts Iran at the center of major oil transport routes.

ANCIENT HISTORY

Iran is home to one of the oldest continuous major world civilizations, dating back to 4000BC. It has been overrun frequently by other powers, but has essentially maintained its Persian identity over time. After millennia of existence as a powerful empire, Alexander the Great invaded ancient Iran from the west and defeated the Persian Achaemenid Empire in 330 BC. Alexander ruled for a short period, and after his death, in 323 BC, he as succeded by the Selucid Empire. They were followed by successive Parthian and Sassanid rulers whose reigns lasted for over 1000 years. In 633 AD, Arab conquerors from the east swept away earlier rulers and established an Islamic caliphate. That event was followed by a period of Islamization of the earlier Persian cultures. A period of foreign occupation and minor dynasties followed during the Middle Ages when what would be modern Iran was incorporated into a larger entity. In 1501, Iran was again reunited under the Savafid Dynasty which brought the Shia branch of Islam to Iran. The nation remained a monarchy, ruled by a Shah, from that period to 1979, when as a consequence of the Iranian Revolution, Iran became an Islamic Republic.

The late 18th century to early 20th century was a time of European colonization of the Middle East, when Russia, France and Great Britain began to carve out economic realms in the region. At that time the Shia Qajar Dynasty ruled Iran (from 1796 to 1925). As a result of these incursions Iran (Persia) lost control over several provinces. In the early 20th century, the Qajar Shah was forced into granting a constitution which restricted the monarchy and established a parliament which was first convened in 1906. When oil was discovered in Persia in 1908 by the British, a contest, the so-called "Great Game", developed between Russia and Britain for control of Persia and its oil resources. The contest which pitted Russia and Britain against each other for resources has continued since then with only the name of the great power-players changing but little else for over a century of conflict.

During WW I, Persia remained neutral, but was occupied by both British and Russian forces which divided Persia up into areas of influence--in total disregard to the nation's and its leaders wishes. After the Russian revolution of 1918-1919, that nation's troops were withdrawn and Britain ruling alone attempted to establish a protectorate there, but was unsuccessful. That failed attempt destabilized the nation which, coupled with an economic downturn at the end of the War, as well as general dissatisfaction with the Shah, led to a coup by military officers. That putsch established Reza Khan, a former Persian Cossack brigade officer, (family name Pahlavi), as a virtual dictator for the next 20 years. But by 1925 Khan had consolidated enough power to declare himself Shah of Iran. He incorporated all the extravagant trappings of the ancient royalty of Persia, to whom he had no relation. Calling itself the Pahlavi Dynasty, the Shah installed a throne room and a copy of the ancient "Peacock" throne, as well as many other wasteful practices of an eastern potentate.

RECENT HISTORY

The Pahlavi Dynasty lasted from 1925-1979. Reza Khan established a strong central government that was nationalistic, anti-communist, and secular. He ushered in the modern world with trains, buses, telephones and electrical service. To maintain his authority, he established a strong military as well as strict censorship. As in other dictatorships, he suppressed political dissent and his governmente was rife with corruption. His efforts at modernization and westernization, were imposed in an attempt to impress and mollify his western supporters. To bolster his bona fides as a client state with the west, he attempted to make far-reaching cultural changes in a backward, religiously conservative population. He pressed for wide reforms in religious practices, and to force men to wear hats with brims (like the western cultures he admired) and to introduce chairs into mosques for seated worship, and he insisted that females mix with males in general public, and for women to abandon the hijab. These pronouncements were met with strong resistance from the clergy and peasant classes. In 1935 the clergy, the devout, and religiously conservative elements, particularly in the bazaars and religious shrines rose up in violent protest. The Shah's troops put down the riots with force and hundreds were hurt and dozens killed.

By 1941, as if a replay of the first world war, the combatants in WW II saw Iran as a source of much-needed petroleum--and a resource that had to be denied to the Germans. The newly completed internal rail lines were also needed as a supply link to transport vital supplies from the Caspian Sea to the Gulf for the war effort. These reasons prompted the English and Russian allies to jointly invade Iran in September 1941. The invasion destabilized the already weak government and Shah Reza Khan who resisted the invasion and was subequently forced to abdicate.

The Shah's pro-British son, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahalvi, seen as a more controllable, malleable protege than his father, was enlisted by the allies as "their man". After the British occupation, and while the war was still raging in 1941, the son was installed as the new Shah. He did not disappoint the British. For certain emoluments to his personal accounts, he permitted the Anglo Iranian Oil company great latitude in exploiting Iranian oils fields as well as a very liberal, pro-British price-structure for the oil they expropriated. The young Shah, happy with his well-financed position, and his ballooning personal wealth, permitted the Iranian parliament to operate much on its own in minor domestic matters, while he controlled the powerful secret police and made major foreign affair decisions in consultation with the British. That way (it seemed) everyone was happy. For a while at least. However, as the years passed the nation became increasingly restive and the political situation more unstable. Between 1947 and 1951 there were six new parliaments and changes of prime minister.

Much of the political unrest was a direct outgrowth of the oppressive, dictatorial nature of the regime, as well as the citizens common knowledge concerning the financial arrangements the Shah had made with the British and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company regarding oil exploitation and oil prices which were heavily slanted to the benefit of the exploiters.

MOHAMMED MOSADDEQ

Mohammed Mosaddeq, who was to play a critical role in modern Iran's history was born into a promient family in Tehran and was trained as a legal scholar, who taught Law at the University of Tehran. After this period as a legal scholar, Mosaddeq entered politics where he had a long career as a state governor, administrator, and member of Parliament. In April of 1951 Mosaddeq's party gained a large majority in parliament and Mosaddeq became Prime Minister.

In 1950, beyond Iran's borders to the north, change was coming to conservative and isolated Saudi Arabia. After observing many years of profitable exploitation of Arab oil by the American oil company, Aramco, which discovered oil there in 1933, King Saud and the royal princes were displeased. They wanted more of the proceeds of the wells for themselves. In 1950 they threatened their long-time partner, the Arab American Oil Company (Aramco) with nationalization. In the ensuing negotiations, faced with the unpleasant possibility of being pushed out of the country, and of losing their entire investment in Saudi Arabia, they had to compromise. The princes bargained the company executives into proposing a 50/50 split with Saudi Arabia (SA) for its oil resources. The offer was accepted and Americans continued operating the fields.

The results of the SA negotiations with Aramco reverberated through the Middle East and in 1951, after elections, when Prime Minister Mosaddeq found himself with a parliamentary majority, he used that political asset to press his policy against the British (Anglo-Iranian Oil Company or AIOC) firm which was perceived (accurately) as unfairly exploiting the Iranian oil reserves and paying only a pittance to the Iranians for each barrel pumped. With the recent success of Saudi Arabia in winning concessions from the Americans on their oil prices, the Iranians sought a similar deal. However, in actual negotiations, unlike what happened in SA, the threat of nationalization of the Iranian oil fields, brought a harsh British response, rather than capitulation like the Americans. The British would not negotiate. The Iranians were forced to proceed with the their threat of nationalization. At that point the Iranians probably would have agreed to a 50/50 split of profits. With the uncompromising British response raging in the public press, the concept of nationalization became enormously popular in Iran, in which the popular opinion had always been that the British were invaders who were stealing the nation's wealth. The oil funds, draining out of Iran into the hands of the British, many saw as being better used to alleviate the oppressive poverty in their own nation. On the British side their obduracy was largely based on their weak financial situation and the fact that they were recovering from a disastrous war. Nationalization was seen as the breach of a solemn contract and theft of a resource the Britiish had discovered, developed and needed desperately. AIOC's loss of Iran's oil would create an enormous impact on the British nation's balance of payments and their military effort against communism. Nationalization would have been a financial disaster for the British. They acted accordingly to protect it. They pulled all the strings they could to punish the Iranians.

When Iran fired the British technicians and oil field workers, Mosaddeq assumed that the Iranians would be able to hire others from other nations, but the British prevented that by applying pressure on oil-consumer European nations to block their workers from entering Iran. When the Iranians finally got their wells pumping again, the British placed a blockade on Iranian oil. When Italy sent workers and continued to purchase Iranian oil, British destroyers escorted the Italian tanker into a distant port and sequesterd the ship, it's crew and cargo. That action effectively closed down the Iranian oil exporting ports. And a worldwide boycott of iranian oil followed. But Mosaddeq did not relent and the nationalization proceeded.

When the oil embargo failed to get the results the British sought, they turned to clandestine acts of sabotage and a plan to overthrow the popular Mosaddeq government. At the urgings of the British, the Shah, acting outside of the law and without a parliamentary vote, summarily removed Mosaddeq from power. The nation responded to this illegal act with massive anti-Shah demonstrations. The resulting popular uprising frightened Shah Pahlavi into relenting and returned Mosaddeq to his position as prime minister. Political unrest continued and in 1952 during the nationalization, the Shah himself was forced into a brief exile as a result of another popular uprising and a palace coup by the imperial guard.

It was at this juncture that the British turned to the Americans. President Eisenhower had been recently elected and unlike his predecessor he was favorale to action against Tehran. Eisenhower, in talks with British PM, Winston Churchill and with the collusion of the exiled Reza Pahalvi agreed to enlist the USA's CIA to put into effect a secret plan to bring down the Mosaddeq government. It was the first use of the CIA to overturn a legitimately elected foreign government--but not the last.

CIA AND THE AJAX PROJECT

Known as the "Ajax Project" by the CIA and in Iran as the "Coup of 28 Mordad" a reference to the Iranian calendar, the concerted CIA attack on Mosaddeq took place on August 19, 1953. On that date, the British MI6 and Americana's CIA selected an Iranian general to cooperate with the plotters against his own government. For this person, they chose a lower echelon general, one Faziollah Zahoedi, who it turns out was a known former pro-Nazi. Zahoedi accepted more than five million US dollars from the CIA to cooperate as the prime minister to replace Mossadeq. A "royal decree" was written up by the CIA plotters removing Mosaddeq and signed by Pahlavi. CIA agents hired common thugs, criminals, as well as clergy and military officers willing to take bribes to take part in street demonstrations against Mosaddeq. The plot almost failed when CIA elements attempting to arrest Mosqsddeq at his residence, were themselves arrested by the Imperial guard. The CIA then turned to some of the most feared mobsters in Teheran who were paid by the Americans to stage more violent, pro-Shah demonstrations and acts of vandalism. During these American planned, staged and coordinated demonstrations more than 800 Iranian civilians were killed. The coup was successful and soon afterward, Mosaddeq himself was arrested, tried and convicted of treason. He was jailed for three years where he was kept in solitary confinement, and then placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. He died in 1967, never having seen the end of the Shah's illegitimate rule. Some of his associates were rounded up, tried, tortured and executed.

The coup d'état engineered by the CIA resulted in the alteration of a constitutional monarchy into an authoritarian one. After the coup the oil resources were shared jointly by the US and British. The USA trained the Iranian military and developed the internal security service SAVAK, the Shah's repressive secret police. The father of one of our nation's heroes of a later war in Iraq, Major general Herbert Norman Schwartzkopf, was tapped by the CIA to bring the Shah back from exile and to train the secret police contingent that was to become SAVAK. Shartzkopf who organized the secret police force, brought his expertise as a former Chief of Police of New Jersey to that job. Shwartzkopf's creation was to become a 5000 man secret police force with almost unlimited power to arrest and interrogate. We can imagine, from our experience with elements of our own American forces in Iraq, which had similar unlimited powers, to what levels of bestiality and depravity it must have descended. With our experiences with the US Iraqi prison at Abu Grahaib, it is easy to understand the level of fear the Iranian secret police must have engendered in the Iranian dissident population. It is claimed by reliable sources, that SAVAK under the Shah was responsible for the torture, death and disappearance of thousands of the Shah's political enemies.

This brutal and potent instrument of suppression used by the Shah, remained a potent source of discontent with the public. As well, was the public knowledge of the continued illegal exploitation of Iranian natural resources by foreigners (and now after the Ajax Coup, the oil was being shared by both British and American companies). Furthermore, the obvious heavy hand of the CIA and American business interests in the installation of the Shah, the creation and training of SAVAK by the Americans, as well as the CIA coup that brought down the popular Mosaddeq government remained issues which festered in the public's mind. These circumstances would eventually become the key causes of fear and dissatisfaction which would bring down the Shah's rule.

FALLOUT AND BLOW BACK OF AJAX PROJECT

The coup of August 1953 instigated the overthrow of a legitimately elected democratic government and saw it replaced by an autocratic, authoritarian monarchy supported by the US and beholden to the needs of Aramco and AIOC and the other oil-dependent European states which participated in the coup in some way. The Shah was correctly perceived as a puppet of the US and the oil companies. The US which had engineered the defeat of an elected democratic government and replaced it with a autocratic regime supported this new entity lavishly with military aid and financial and technical help to its secret police. The US efforts aided and abetted a brutal and oppressive regime. In Iran the US was no longer seen as a force for freedom and justice, but as the instrument of oppression, torture and brutality. The Shah did not help himself either. His regime was not only oppressive,but was corrupt and extravagant. His financial policies led to inflation, and food and other shortages. His over-ambitious domestic policies were set pieces to please his western supporters, but which greatly antagonized his own people and particularly antagonized conservative religious Iranians and the clergy. The Shah's enemies were brutally suppressed by SAVAK as were Marxists and Socialists. All these factors eventually led to the unrest which culminated in the overthrow of the Shah in the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Shah went into exile. His brutal regime and his dynasty was over. But the lingering effects of the America's exploitation of the nation's resources, the CIA led coup, its support for a dictatorial regime and training and support for SAVAK were to continue to fester in the Iranian body politic. These effects would continue to affect the perception of the US in Iran for decades to come.

AFTERMATH

In 1980, during the chaos associated with the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution the previous year, Iran's neighbor to the west, Sunni dominated Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, with which that nation had a long term border dispute, attacked without warning, taking a large chunk of Iranian territory. Iran in the throes of the revolution was unprepared for the war. Iraq's army was bigger and better armed. The US still seething from the loss of a key ally and client state in the Shah's Iran, tilted toward Iraq--the aggressor- during the war. There is some evidence suggesting that elements within the Jimmy Carter administration gave Saddam the 'green light' to go to war with iran. We supported Iraq during the eight year war, with war materiel, satellite intelligence, and overseeing transfer of war supplies from third parties that were destined to Iraq. We are reputed to have supplied the Iraqis with experimental poison gases which they used against Iran's forces. The US navy acted to convoy ships and oil tankers through the Straits of Hormuz where, when it encountered Iranian ships, it would sink them. There were several incidents in which the US and Iran clashed at sea. Later in the war, US vessels would typically cruise the Straits, within Iranian territorial waters, to lure out small Iranian gun boats which they would then target. During one such incident, the US Navy frigate Vincennes, cruising inside Iranian waters, shot down an Iranian commercial airliner carrying 292 passengers and crew, claiming at first that its target was an attacking Iranian fighter jet. That account was later proved to be untrue. The US never apologized for the unprovoked attack on a civilian aircraft. President G.W. Bush later awarded the clearly culpable commander of the Vincennes with a promotion. The war lasted eight years and cost the lives of betwwen 500,000 to a million Iranians and about a third of a million Iraqis. The war expenses topped more than a half a trillion US dollars for each country. Both countries suffered severe economic consequences after the war.

THE COVOLUTED TENTACLES OF HISTORY

That first Iraq-Iran War during which we secretly and overtly contributed arms and materiel to Iraq, ended in stalemate, but ended with an emboldened and much better-armed Iraq. These were circumstances, in part, we contributed to and encouraged. Our policies in Iran and Iraq were to have unhappy consequences. They led eventually and inevitably to the two US-Iraq wars, costing our economy trillions of dollars and thousands of young American lives (and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives). These unfunded wars, combined with the effects of lower taxes for the wealthy, and other domestic polices, generated huge federal deficits. The war costs and the bulging Bush deficits brought on by the Bush-policy of lower tax revenues for high income citizens were two of the three contributing causes of the Great Recession of 2007-8. Those problems were compounded by President Obama when he bailed out the banks and Wall Street early in his term. Indeed, our problems with Iran have led to hard times for us, as well as unhappy ones for Iran, creating enormous hardships for them and their neighbors, and unstability in the rest of the Middle East.

Looking back, one might say one of our greatest mistakes was implementing the misguided CIA plan to destabilize and overthrow Iran's stable, democratically elected Mosaddeq government. It seems almost as if God or Allah is punishing us for our misdeeds. But our hubris and inability revise a course of action once in play (even after it is obvious it is wrong and unhelpful) and the powerful role the American oil industry plays in our foreign policy decisions were also to blame.

Therefore, let us not compound our Iranian misdeeds and self inflicted wounds by further ill-advised military and/or covert CIA interventionism in Iran.

We should turn to a new policy with regard to Iran. Say no to Israel, say no to an oil embargo of Iran. Say yes to a change of direction, and a new page in our unhappy history with Iran.

As Ron Paul has said on the Republican campaign trail, "we must begin talks with the Iranians". Our goal should be a stable, Middle East. We can go a long way toward that goal by confidence boosting talks and who knows possibly a non-agression pact with Iran? Then what need would they have for nuclear weapons? What choice do we have? Our present course is set towards unrelenting war and conflict. Our nation and the rest of the world can can no longer afford that route. It's time to push that tiller way over to port and change course.

Get the picture?

RJK

A GEOLOGISTS MEMOIR OF A MATACUMBA KEY FISHING TRIP

2012-01-12T08:32:00.000-08:00

GEOLOGIZING ON A BIG GAME FISHING TRIP TO THE FLORIDA KEYS.

In May of 2011 I was fortunate enough to have been invited to attend one of Jim Miller’s celebrated fishing trips. Our gang of retirees, seamen, businessmen, entrepreneurs and their sons wended our way south in early Spring around Father's Day to spend a few days on Matacumba Key in the Florida Keys using Bud and Mary's Marina as our fishing base. Our goal was guided-back country-fishing from fast moving skiffs in fabulous Florida Bay. Our quarry being tarpon taken on light tackle and other fabled game fish, but there was so much more. As is my habit, I jotted down notes of our activities and took photographs to aid my memory. With those sources next to my typewriter and pleasant visions of wide open shallow seas dotted with tiny tropical keys, I have put together this incomplete and inadequate memoir of a pleasant experience. My purpose was and remains to somehow fix this fine adventure in my mind, and return to mentally enjoy it again and atgain. Perhaps some of my jottings here may please you, my readers, as well. Here, below is what this author, a former marine scientist, pacticing geologist and nature lover absorbed during those warm sunny days on the Bay. Though the foregoing describes what captured the interes of this author-- the Bay. its physical setting and geology and some of its wildlife--it unfortunately leaves out the pleasant comradeship, excellent conversations, joyful friendships. new an old..and great food. Those must wait for another blog.

FLORIDA BAY

Florida Bay is a shallow, shelf-lagoon, encompassing a triangular area of over 1,100 square miles enclosed by the graceful arc of the Florida Keys on the south and the Everglades to the north. The rich mix of marine and freshwater environments, shallow, crystal-clear water, and abundant sunlight provide a perfect environment for a complex web of marine life including marine plants, and a host of organisms from tiny foraminifera to manatees, dolphins, giant tarpon, sharks, rays and even twelve-foot long prehistoric sawfish. The calcareous bottom mud provides a substrate for turtle grass and manatee grass which carpet the bottom and provide both food and cover for many other forms of life. As in other estuaries, fresh water mixes with sea water to provide a wide range of salinities to which many different species are adapted. The Everglades, just to the north, are the source of fresh water which flows southward to mix with seawater from the Gulf. Thus the salinity of the Bay increases toward the south providing a variety of salinity concentrations suitable for many different life forms. In summer, when the sun heats and evaporates Bay water salinity tends to increase from normal sea water levels (@33 parts per thousand) to concentrations sometimes two or three times that level. On the other hand, during periods of heavy rainfall, salt concentration in some parts of the Bay may fall to well below normal. The plants and animals associated with the Bay are mostly adapted to these fluctuations and thrive in the area.

Because of its shallow depth, one sees a great deal of bay-bottom. The view is a fleeting as one skims and bounces over the surface at 35 miles per hour, your skiff driven by big twin outboards, pushing up a white rooster tail and making a wide wake. But even in passing it is apparent how shallow the Bay is and what it is like. Here and there where boat props gouge into its surface one can see that it is composed of a white lime mud. My sources say that mud may be tens of feet thick, and thicker in the west than in the east. The mud banks have been cut and filled by currents and are somewhat controlled by the limestone bedrock underneath the mud. There are shallow ridges and deeper basins. In places, storms scour coarse lime-sand and mud from one place and pile it in another. When that happens the mud banks might be high enough for Mangroves to grow on them, once they take root on the banks…that’s how the islands form.

The Bay's shallow water protected it from incursion. Were it deeper it would have been exploited for its fish and open space long ago, and would not be the isolated, pristine place it is now. The fact is that its shallow depth has prevented human occupation and incursion of criss-crosssing, pollution-spewing big boats which can not navigate in the Bay. Even the small-draft Florida Bay skiffs, which draw only a foot or more, can become trapped in the shallows. The skiffs and the fishing guides navigate the Bay by keeeping a mental map of each of the many channels and deeps using that knowledge to get from one place to another. There is no straight-line course through the Bay--one must follow the complex maze of channels and "lakes" to safely get from one place to another..that's one reason why one needs a knowlegeable guide to fish there.

Another factor is the tide which compounds the depth problem. In the Bay itself, between the banks and flats are basins. “We call ‘em “lakes,” says Jim Wilcox our Florida Bay Fishing Guide. “The water in the lakes can be six feet deep at low tide. More than once, when fishin’ was so good I didn’t pay attention to the falling tide, I actually got trapped in Rabbit Basin and had to wait till the tide came up before I could navigate out of there.”

FLORIDA BAY KEYS

Jim Wilcox our guide remarked that it was the Mangrove roots, especially Red Mangrove, which act to trap wave-and-current-washed mud and sand. This builds up around the roots and as time goes by, the plants may form a living ring around the sand bank on the ridge. High tides and storm surges wash sediment into the mangrove ring. Mangrove roots act to trap sediment and cause the outer rim of the island to grow upward. The process tends to produce islands with more a less a “dish” or “platter” cross section--high on the edges and shallower in the interior. But in time, the interior fills up too. Different plants take up residences as the mud and sand accumulates. Black Mangrove prefers slightly higher or less inundated soils, and White Mangrove prefers to have its roots dry out once each day. So in time a natural sequence of Red mangrove, Black Mangrove and White Mangrove slowly form to completely or nearly occupy much of the area of the islet or key.”

Following up on what Jim said, I did some research and discovered the following about mangroves.

The Red Mangrove (Rhizophora mangle) has a reddish bark and can grow to 50 feet, but is most often a shrub. It grows closest to open water. And is sometimes called the “walking tree,” since it has multiple “prop” roots, that help to stabilize the tree in soft mud and which encourage sediment to settle around its roots. These aerial roots also help provide oxygen to the roots, which are either totally underwater or if in mud are often growing in anoxic conditions. In addition, these roots filter out salt from the salt-water environment they most often grow in. This is one of the few trees that has its seeds (propagules) actually germinate while on the tree. See this site: http://www.dep.state.fl.us/coastal/habitats/mangroves.htm

The Black Mangrove (Avicennia germinans) is taller than the former species, growing to 60 feet in height (but often less in Florida Bay). It is also more likely to be growing higher above sea level, or further inland where its roots are in dry or semi-dry substrate at least at low tide. It has a dark-gray or dark brown to black bark and no prop roots, but it does have tube-like structures called pneumatophores which the plant sends up vertically from the roots and into the air, and which serve to provide air to roots which are constantly wet and in water with little or no oxygen. The Black Mangrove has hairs on its under-leaf- sides which excrete excess salt. Crystals of salt can often be seen collecting there. The salt is pure sea-salt and this “mangrove salt” was harvested by early Florida colonists as an important source of edible salt. The Black Mangrove also has seeds which germinate while still on the trees.

White Mangrove (Laguncularia racemosa) is smaller than the other trees and grow in areas which are flooded less frequently. This species lives where the substrate drys out every day. The trunks and branches are often twisted and misshapen. This characteristic is often attributed to the poorer soils and more variable soil-moisture and salinity concentrations where it grows, as well as its exposure to strong winds. The petiole of its leaves have two small glands near the base of each leaf (called nectaries) which excrete salt. Salt crystals may be seen near them and on the base of the leaf. It typically has no prop-roots or pneumatophores but it does have many lenticles or breathing pores on the lower surface of the trunk to provide needed oxygen when water levels are high.

Jim described the Bay bottom topography this way. “It’s like the rough skin of an old ‘gator’ or salt-water ‘croc’ with long ridges, and spines and low places in between. And the whole ‘gator skin’ is carpeted with a thick layer of lime-mud. So’s all the ridges and hollows and swales are smoothed out a bit to make the average depth about three feet while the deep basins are me’be nine or ten feet. If it warn’t fer the mud, you guys could walk out here ta fish.” He giggled at that, adding, “But the mud’s a lot deeper than the water..so don’t try that.”

THE STUFF BELOW THE MUD
I found Jim to be correct about the bottom being like a “gator skin”--see above. The mud has its own ups and downs but it also sits on top of an even more corrugated surface of basement rock. Geologists tell us that Florida Bay has a rock basement of limestone which can be traced to a depth of 20,000 feet or more. They have termed the top-most stratum, the ‘Miami Limestone’. This layer was deposited during the last ice age (Pleistocene Epoch) when sea level rose and fell in the region by as much as 200 feet. During that time there were long periods when some of the beds that would be the Miami Limestone were exposed to aerial erosion and chemical alteration. As in all such places where limestone sits exposed to the air, naturally acidic rainwater and humic acids (from decayed vegetation) can dissolve the calcreous surface rock and permit acid water to seep downward through naturally occurring joints and cracks. In the process, the flow of water may hollow out deep holes, or create large solution cavities. We will recogize these features elsewhere as subterranean caves and caverns. Often the rroofs of these caves collapse as a result of the weight of the overlying rock The result is to create an irregular surface with ridges and hollows known as “karst” topography. These processes affected Florida Bay to create that "gator skin" texture Jim, our guide spoke of. That surface was finally inundated in the last several thousand years and marine lime-mud carpeted the entire area. The underlying karst topography is the factor which controls the locations of the two-hundred or so “keys” or mud islands in the Bay and the intervening deep basins or “lakes”. The keys are generally located on the resistant higher ridges and the solution cavities or depressions in the underlying Miami limestone (of Late Pleistocene) control the locations of the deep holes and basins. Another interesting fact is that the underlying Pleistocene Epoch, Miami Limestone slopes gently from east to west, as a consequence, the mud deposits are thicker in the west than in the east.

When I mentioned that fact to Jim on one of our forays out into central Florida Bay near Rabbit Basin, he pushed his long billed fishing cap off the side of his head for a good scratch, then without a response went back to “anchoring” the skiff in the shallow water near a small “fishin’ hole” using the long boat push-pole. All of the Florida Bay skiffs carry these boat-long push-poles secured to their side decks. I noticed Jim was easily able to poke the near 20 foot skiff-pole down a good ten feet in soft mud in the shallows around Rabbit Basin and elsewhere. The Florida Bay fishing skiffs can be rendered stationary by stabbing the long, boat pole, into the deep mud at a 60 degree angle. After Jim set the pole deep enough, he secured it to the stern, with a length of rope. Then our guide finallly turned to make a leisuely response to my comment.

“Damned if I care how deep the bay-mud is, as long as this ##@$###’ pole, holds us steady on the edge of my 'secret fishin' hole' where we’ll ketch fish.”

It did. And at each cast, our hooks, baited with fresh grass shrimp, attracted ravenous fish which gobbled our baits. Both Bob and I netted us each several nice-size fish. We pulled at least ten keeper-size Red Fish, Speckled Trout or Snapper out of that spot (but we put only one each in the ice chest). Oh…you ask, “Where is that hole?” Sorry, I was sworn to secrecy.

FLORIDA'S LONG AND INTERESTING GEOLOGICAL HISTORY
Geologically, Florida (and its extreme southern tip, Florida Bay) is a most recent addition to the North American continent. Florida became a part of North America only late in the continent’s history, during the early Mesozoic Era, about 200 million years ago (mya), when dinosaurs roamed the earth. That was a time when all the earth’s continental slabs had been swept together into one great supercontinent known as “Pangaea.” The upper surface layer of the earth, or “crust” is able to slip around on the deeper and heavier mantle surface, as you might shift and slide the pieces of a Rubic’s Cube. This process of coalescence and spreading of continental slabs has occurred several times in the past over the earth’s long 4.5 billion year history. The cyclical process includes a phase in which the lighter continental slabs slide over the surface to combine into one large world continent, forming mountain chains at the line of collision, then, after a period of quiescence, they fracture and separate apart again. The continents, composed of lighter, low-density rocks (called sial) were formed by the chemical and physical alteration of the primordial heavy, dark-colored basalt rock from the earth’s mantle. Sial is formed from mantle rock when it is extruded onto the surface of the earth where it interacts with the atmosphere and hydrosphere to produce a relatively lighter and light-colored frothy rock we know as sialic rock or granite. The process of creating supercontinents and taking them apart again has been going on for nearly as long as the earth has been around. Geologists have documented several past sequences. But in the most recent phase, (in what is known as the Mesozoic Era, or Age of Dinosaurs occurring from 250 mya to 65 mya), North America, Africa, Eurasia, Australia and Antarctica were sutured together (if you can imagine that) along a line which ran down the east coast of North America. This great suture-line was puckered up along its length to form the ancient Appalachian Mountain chain. To the east was the vast continent of Africa, and to the west that of North America. The process of continent collision had begun hundreds of millions of years earlier in the Paleozoic Era (about 460 mya) with the process being completed to form Pangaea, about 250 mya.

The great mountain chain running from Georgia to Maine had been undergoing erosion for some time when our Florida story begins, but it even then it resembled more the present-day Himalayas than our Appalachians of today.

Our story of Florida begins after the supercontinent of Pangaea had been formed and was in place for about 20 million years (early in the Mesozoic Era (Dinosaur Age) about 180 million years ago). At that time (180mya), the southern end of Pangaea just east of where the Appalachian Mountains ended began to fray apart at a “rift” zone between what would be today the North American and African continents. The source of the rifting or spreading was both slow persistent currents in the mantle and the intrusion of thin layers of molten rock into the overlying crust. Molten rock from the earth’s mantle, heated by nuclear fission, squeezed and melted its way upward through elongate cracks and fractures in the brittle, upper-crust. Thin slivers of molten mantle-rock (basalt) penetrated the crust and cooled. The process continued at a steady rate, causing the crust to bulge upward slightly and press the two sides of the rift apart. The combined effects actually push and spread continents apart, in this case driving the giant slabs of North America and Africa apart from each other. The area formed by the fracture zone, known as a “rift valley” (like the one in east Africa today), comprised of heavy rock sagged and was soon filled with sea-water as spreading continued. This newly created arm of the sea, between North America and Africa was, of course, the primordial Atlantic Ocean and the spreading center (pushing the continents apart at the rate at which human finger nails grow) would create a low, elongate bulge on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean about half-way between Africa and North America eventually known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

But back to Florida’s history! As North America spread away from Africa, an accessory rift in this location isolated a large rectangular chunk of the African continent, and left it stranded near the southern end of present-day Georgia as Africa slid away. That piece of African basement-rock which remained behind would eventually become what geologists call the ‘Florida Platform’ or the base upon which other more modern sediments accumulated to form what we know as the State of Florida.

The Florida Platform has a distinct pattern of two different rock types, basalt rock in the northern end, granite in the center, and basalt in the southern end. Geologists working in western Africa can point today to the place where these rocks were rifted away from that continent, so very long ago. A closer look at the Platform reveals a central portion which is comprised of lighter rock and which tended to be buoyed-upward while the northern end and southern ends are of heavier rock which sagged downward. This pattern of basement rock orientation continued to control geological processes on the peninsula as we will see below.

Initially, the whole of the primordial Florida peninsula was buoyant enough to rise up above sea level. A shallow ocean, much like what we see in present day Florida Bay covered the entire peninsula of those days, with perhaps small portions of the central corridor rising up as low islands. At this time, due to the sag in the northern end of the peninsula (where the rocks were denser), a “trough” formed which permitted the ancient Gulf Stream to meander its way across the northern end of early Florida near where present-day Jacksonville is now situated. Though erosion was actively wearing down the steep Appalachian mountains just north of Florida and producing copious clastic (continental or sialic) sediments two features, the Florida Trough, and the Gulf Stream current prevented the accumulation of these from reaching peninsula Florida. As it is today in Florida Bay the sources of water bring little or no clastic sediment and the water remains clear. Only marine derived lime sediment from the mechanical break-down of marine shell is found in Florida Bay. That is very much what all of peninsula Florida looked like in those days.

Thus, for millions of years the bottom of the shallow seas which washed over Florida accumulated only marine-derived sediments such as coral-and-shell-derived-lime-mud. Continental clastic (i.e. mud and sand ) sediments such as quartz or sialic-mineral sands were excluded. The early seas would have looked much like modern day Florida Bay where the natural processes of growth and decay of corals, shell-fish, crustaceans and tiny marine organisms which live in the warm tropical and clear waters creates the sediments, as they do today in Grand Bahamas Banks.

North of Florida on the mainland, near the end of the Mesozoic Era, parts of the Appalachian chain were uplifted and a new flood of continental sediments (made up of weathered and broken siliceous rocks such as granite) were carried down from Georgia’s highlands and eventually filled in the Gulf Trough.

By about 45 mya in the early Cenozoic, the Gulf Stream was directed further south around this build-up of continental sand and clay sediment on the Florida Platform. More clastic deposits such as land-derived silt, clay and sand poured down onto the peninsula, washing south to create the uplands and flatlands of northern and north-central Florida. More of these materials were found along the west and east coasts than in the interior, as a consequence a shallow topographic trough developed in this central region. During this time, the southern end of the peninsula, from Lake Okeechobee south, remained isolated from these events and the southern region continued to be partially inundated by shallow seas.

In the most recent periods of geologic history, the Pleistocene and Holocene Epochs, this fragile area experienced several periods when sea levels receded and the land was exposed, and other times when high stands of the sea washed in and covered it again. During the latter periods more deposits of lime-mud accumulated, building up thick deposits of limestone as the basement rock for most of southern Florida. In the former times when the limestone basement was exposed to aerial erosion the limestone became weakened and eroded, exposed joints in rock widened and let mildly acid rain water and groundwater seep downward. In some places, solution cavities and limestone caverns formed beneath the surface. Over time the solution cavities enlarged and the caverns collapsed to create an uneven and checkered surface called karst topography.

LAKE OKEECHOBEE AND FLORIDA BAY
Lake Okeechobee (with an area of more than 700 square miles, an average depth of nine feet deep, and with a capacity of more than a trillion gallons of fresh water) sits at the northern end of a long shallow topographic depression which occupies the central portion of the southern half of the Florida peninsula and dips toward the south. The trough formed when the clay which underlies the center of the peninsula compacted more than the sand and limestone deposits found along both coasts. The region was once dry land, but with increased rainfall and rising ground water tables it became a marshy, low-lying zone where from about 6000 to 4000 years ago peat bogs developed. With increasing rainfall and rising water levels the bogs flooded, forming a shallow lake. As result of the high stand of the water table much of the vegetation in the central area of the lake died. The southward flow of surface water tended to carry decayed materials and nutrients in that direction where it accumulated in drifts along the south shore of the lake. In these regions, the rate of growth of the peat-forming vegetation along the south bank was enhanced and the rate of peat formation increased. Eventually, peat deposits built up, rising to a level of about 13 feet, a height sufficient to dam the water flow and create a permanent, but shallow lake behind it. Seasonally, during the spring and fall, water levels in the lake would reach levels high enough to rise up and top the dam. These overflow waters flow south into the Everglades where it slowly drifts further south and eventually seeps into Florida Bay. This southward seepage was critical for the health of the freshwater Everglades (The River of Grass) and as well for the vegetation and creatures of the estuarine lagoons of Biscayne Bay and Florida Bay, many of which (such as Turtle Grass and Mangrove ) are dependent upon a modulated level of salinity to survive and reproduce. Evaporation of the sea water in the shallow Florida Bay during the summer months and during drought periods sometimes causes salinity to rise to more than twice (or in some cases three times) the concentration of sea water. Those levels can kill or stunt the growth of some plant species were it not for the steady flow of fresh water from the Everglades.
Finally, in the last fifty (50) million years, the earth cooled and ice built up in northern regions forming continental glaciers on North America (where their farthest extent south on the east coast was at Long Island, New York) and elsewhere in the world, as a result causing world-wide sea levels to fall. Sea level fell so low (nearly 300 feet) causing nearly the entire Florida Platform at one time to be exposed to the air, becoming over three hundred (300) miles wide at the latitude of Lake Okeechobee rather than the present day 135 miles wide. Then, slowly, as the glaciers melted and retreated, about 10-15,000 years ago in the north, they added meltwaters back into the sea (and the climate warmed) causing sea-level to rise slowly at a rate of about (since 1932, sea levels have been rising at a rate of 1 foot (0.30 m) per 100 years) ----cm per year.

CORAL REEFS AND THE HISTORY OF THE KEYS
During the last 10,000 years coral reefs formed along the southern end of peninsula on the steep edge of the original basement rock one the edge of the Florida Platform. Corals can live and thrive only in clear, warm, agitated seawater, and only within 200 feet of the surface. They are almost exclusively found in tropical or near tropical waters. The southern end of Florida, where the basement rocks dropped off into abyssal depths, and the Gulf Stream carries silt-free, warm, sea water–is a place where corals can thrive. Here along the southern edge of the peninsula, grew underwater “forests” of brain coral, fan coral, shelf coral, and staghorn corals. In the process of growing and expanding, the corals produced vast quantities of coral-rock which filled in the spaces around the living corals and create environments for other creatures, such as mollusks, crustaceans, bryozoans, foraminifera, and some forms of algae all of which remove calcium from sea water and create calcium carbonate.

As sea levels rose, the corals grew upward to keep within the well-lit or photic zone (@ upper two hundred feet (sixty meters) of the surface where there was sufficient sunlight for the living algae which live symbiotically within the body of the coral polyps and carry on photosynthesis. These algae, which like plants, come in many different colors, are termed zooxanthelle (they are a form of “green” algae which live within the coral polyps bodies in a symbiotic relationship and which produce the majority (90%) of energy the coral polyps need to thrive.)

In time, coral reefs along Florida’s south coast developed and expanded into an elongate arc of approximately two-hundred miles long. The arc of coral reefs begin in the east, off shore from Virginia Key near Miami, and extend south and west all the way to the Dry Tortugas some 230 miles distant to the west. Protected from wave action and erosion by the reef line, is a quiet area of sea water where there is little of no sediment from land and where calcium carbonate-debris produced by corals, bryozans, foraminifera, mollusks, crustaceans and other sea life accumulates as a lime-mud sediment. The shallow lagoons we know as Biscayne Bay and Florida Bay as well as the sandy banks which make up the lower keys are composed of this waste by-product of coral growth as well as other animals and some plants which remove carbon-dioxide from the water and combine it with calcium ions in sea water to produce calcium carbonate (though not in that order). Thus corals and other marine organisms help to remove and sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In that way they help to cleanse the atmosphere of excess carbon dioxide. They are indeed “green” organisms. The lime-mud produced by corals and other animals carpets the sea-floor, and like other sediments is carried by currents to settle in areas of quiet water. The lagoon environment landward of the Florida Keys was and remains such an environment--where carbonate mud accumulates. In some places the fine grained deposits are reworked by currents and waves to form small oval particles (1-2 mm in diameter) called “ooids” (“oo oids”) when this material becomes compacted it forms what is known as oolitic limestone. The lower Keys and Key West are composed of this form of limestone.

FLORIDA BAY AS A LAGOON SYSTEM
The Florida Bay lagoon is a shallow warm-water tropical, sea. The lagoons are carpeted in a thick carbonate mud upon which the Turtle Grass and Manatee Grass grow. It is noteworthy that these plants are not “seaweeds” or “real grass”, but actual flowering plants which only remotely resemble seaweed. They have true flowers and produce fruits as well. The “grasses” of the lagoons are an integral element of the overall ecology of the Bay.

The lime-mud and sand sediment which carpets Biscayne and Florida Bays is derived from fragments of living corals, algae, sea grasses, shellfish-- such as oysters and clams, and mostly the vast numbers of minute animals with calcareous shells which live on the sea grasses and algae and within the sediments of this environment.

Florida Bay, Biscayne Bay, parts of the western keys and the Marquesea Islands and the Dry Tortugas are all part of the lagoon-system protected from the sea by the arc of reefs we know as the Florida Keys.

All about corals at” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_reef

As we cast our lines into the quiet waters near Carl Ross Key and watched the rod tips for that tell tale bobbing action of a feeding fish, I asked, Jim what’s it like on that island?”
“It’s all jest lime mud or stuff the geologists call “ooliths”. He pulled down the bandana he used to protect his face from the sun to mouth out the word precisely.
“Yeah oo..oo..liths,” he said.

“The basement of the islands of the upper Keys are made up of stony corals and stuff that breaks off the corals and gets crushed up by fish like parrot fish which actually eat coral,” said Jim.
We often think of only the hard skeleton when we hear the word “coral”, however, the actual hard, stony coral is, in life, covered by a thin film of living matter from which, in a regular pattern, spring tiny sac-like animals with a ring of tentacles around their mouth and known as “colonial coelenterates”. The word coelenterate, signifies an animal which has a “coelenteron” or an empty sac which communicates with the outside sea water through a manubrium or mouthlike structure. Some of the “sac-bearing animals” form colonies which secrete calcium carbonate to support their soft bodies. Each individual looks like a tiny sea anemone, another coelenterate. Like that creature, it has tentacles arranged around a central mouth and a coelenteron (a sac-like structure). The tentacles are armed with stinging cells (scientists call them “cnidoblasts”) which are designed to immobilize and entangle small floating prey-animals. Once immobilized, the tentacles move the prey to the manubrium (mouth) and then into the coelenteron where digestion takes place. Unlike anemones, corals can lay down a solid film of sturdy calcium carbonate just below its base to anchor it and to help support their soft bodies. The colony of corals can produce calcite forms of great variety which can grow to great size as each season a new layer of calcite is added on top of the old layer. Like plants, corals tend to grow toward the light. So, if they live on a slowly subsiding sea-bottom they can maintain their preferred location, close to the surface, by adding new growth at a rate that keeps up with the subsidence. However, when sea levels fall, and they are exposed to the air, they die and their calcite skeletons break up and become part of the sea sediment.

As a consequence of their great potential for exuberant growth, corals and the complexes they form called “reefs” are sometimes referred to as “the marine equivalent of the tropical forest” or the tropical forests of the oceans. The individual animals (of the colony) or these are referred to as “polyps”, each have colorful zooxanthelle (single-celled “green” plants) which live symbiotically within the animals’s clear tissues, and as a result live corals are often very brightly colored. The chlorophyll in these cells may have various colors. Corals thus exhibit symbiosis-- a mutually beneficial relationship between two different species. The zooxanthelle living within the polyp’s tissues use sunlight to photosynthesize carbon dioxide and water into simple sugars which are then used by the coral animals (and the zooxanthelle) as a major part of their nutrient supply. Like all green plants the zooxanthelle produce oxygen which is used by the coral polyps. While the benefit to the zooxanthelle is that they have a safe place to live (inside of the coral polyp) where they are well-supplied with carbon dioxide resulting from the metabolism of the coral animal, and, as well, have free access to water and sunlight.

It is axiomatic that corals occur in warm, clear, low-nutrient, tropical waters, typically described as “blue water”. Blue water is encountered far off-shore (or in enclosed seas like the Mediterranean which is surrounded largely by dry or desert lands) or places far away from land where sediment is scarce(terrestrial environments shed sediment via rivers and streams). These areas also are source of minerals such as phosphates, and nitrates, plant nutrients, which cause blooms of algae. The deep blue color of “blue water” is a sign of low nutrient load and low suspended (sediment)matter. The blue color is generally a good indicator of a water column of low fertility. The blue itself is the result of the fact that the sun’s rays are able to penetrate to depth where the red and yellow wavelengths are absorbed and reflect back only the short-wave blue and violet part of the spectrum which are of a wave length which interact (or scatter) with the water molecules themselves, scattering them and sending those wavelengths back into our eyes. The blue color indicates that light is not coming in contact with suspended matter—such as sediment and plankton--indicating very low nutrient load. Since corals can produce their own food, they can survive in these low-nutrient environments. But since corals can live only in the photic (well-lighted) zone, they die when they are too deep (over 200 feet) where sunlight can-not penetrate, or also where they are too cold, preferring water around 20-27 degrees C (i.e., close to room temperature), or in poorly oxygenated or murky sediment-laden water—or water that is too acid.

When corals are stressed by one or more of these conditions they might void their zooxanthelle (or digest them) and thus turn colorless. “Bleached corals” are corals that are being environmentally stressed. Thus, it is easy to understand why corals are threatened worldwide. Along the well-visited Florida Keys where 82,000 inhabitants make their homes (and an equal or greater number of tourists make visits each year) there are obvious major disturbances. These are caused by the physical presence of motor boats, by the dumping of fuels, by disposal of sewage and human wastes rich in nitrogen and phosphorous. The latter substances can cause algae blooms, as well as the alteration of the acid-base level or pH of sea-water, which is normally well-buffered, but in many places now shows signs of increasing acidification as a result of burning fossil fuels—you know-- global warming.

Jim Wilcox, our well-informed guide, pointed out that though corals inhabit only less than one-tenth of one-percent of the earth’s ocean surface…they provide a home to twenty-five percent of the oceans marine species. Jim ticked off a list of fish, mollusks, worms, crustaceans, echinoderms, tunicates that live in or around coral reefs.

“That’s what a ‘paradox’ is,” said Jim, as he focused his eyes, partly obscured by his thin face mask (a protection against the sun) on the gentle but regular bobbing of the last ferrule on the tip of the heavy rod, baited with a big chunk of a Ladyfish.

“What’s that?” asked Bob, rising from a bit of mid-day sun-induced lethargy.

“Probably a crab or a small catfish nibblin’ on that bait,” said Jim.

“No, I mean what’s the ‘paradox’?” said Bob.

“Oh, the paradox is that these coral critters thrive so well as to produce all this here mud in the Bay, by livin’ only in waters that are so poor in nutrients. They are like them nitrogen-fixing plants—the legumes-- of the land-plant world--they also can produce their own food—ya know, by them nodules on their roots,” he added, stopping to reel in a bit of slack on the heavy rod. Then he turned and faced Bob “and that’s how they create such a rich environment for all these other critters…..” But at that point Jim suddenly stopped speaking, as he turned to the stern of the skiff where the rod tip bounced hard in its holder and the braided 100 lb test whirred out over the restraint of a tight star-drag…”and even these big-mouth Tarpon out here”, grunted Jim, as he pulled the rod from its holder and jabbed at the blue sky with a vicious hook-setting strike.

The heavy rod tip, bent into a sharp curve.

Jim yelled excitedly. “He’s on!”

He violently pumped in a few yards of line as the rod bent into a bow-shape, it's tip bending down over the gunwhale to dance just above the water.

“He’s a big’un,” he said, his arms straining as he as he moved aft to pass the tense rod over to Bob.

“What’s on?"Bob and I yelled in unison.

“Dunno, but it's a big unnnnnnnn!" grunted Jim through clenoched teeth, as the rod jerked downward sharply, twisting our fish guide around and pulling him toward the gunwale.

Then--- "Auuuuu…shit!” cursed Jim' as the line suddenly went slack.

“Lost im,” said Jim, disconsolately, as he reeled the loose wavy line in over the boat side.

Then he turned optimistic again, continuing."It would be a horrible mistake if we stupidly let something bad happen to these coral critters,” opined Jim as he rummaged in his well stocked orderly fishing box to replace the lost hook and leader.

A LIST OF CRITTERS I OBSERVED ON THE TRIP

INVERTEBRATES

PORIFERA

Unidentified sponges

INSECTS
Great Southern White Butterfly (Ascia monuste). Food: Sea Rocket and Saltwort

CRUSTACEANS
Horseshoe crab
Blue Crab

FISH
Gafftopsail Catfish
Great Barracuda or “cuda”
Ladyfish
Mangrove Snapper
Mullet
Pinfish
Red Drum
Smalltooth Sawfish (a rare and threatened species) (Pristis pectinata) adults are 9-13’
long, but we saw several three-foot babies in the shallows)
Speckeled Trout
Southern Stingray
Spotfin or Mojarra
Stripped Mullet
Tarpon or “poon”

REPTILES
Atlantic Ridley Turtle
Reef Gecko
American crocodile (Jim spotted a muddy area on a small key he said looked like a “croc mud wallow”. So not seen but reputed to be in the area)

MAMMALS
Bottlenosed Dolphin

BIRDS
Bald Eagle
Black Vulture
Brown Pelican
Common Tern
Caspian Tern
Cormorant-very common..some seen resting on stakes above turtle grass replenishment zones.
Double Crested Cormorant
Frigate Bird
Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)—On Carl Ross Island
Great White Egret—(Ardea albus) widespread
Great White Heron
Laughing gull
Magnificent Frigate bird
Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) commonly seen feeding on channel stakes out in Florida Bay
Ring necked Dove
Ringbilled Gull
Roseate Spoonbill—near Car Ross Island Florida Bay
Roseate Tern ?—common on channel marker stakes where they rest and feed
Royal Tern
Showy Egret (Egretta thula) widespread

Distance Note:

From Bud and Mary’s Marina on Matacumba.Key it is thirty miles to the Gulf of Mexico

PLANTS

Grasses

Turtle Grass http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/southflorida/seagrass/profiles.html

Manatee Grass http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/southflorida/seagrass/profiles.html

Turtle grass (Thalassia testudinum) is not a sea weed---or a grass. It is a flowering plant which has flowers which produce light green to pink blooms underwater and are pollinated under water. The fruit form and drift away to form new plants. Turtle grass has a horizontal rhizome buried as much as ten inches under the marine mud on which it lives. The plant prefers water of high salinity and protected from wave action. The flat elongate leaves with rounded tips arise from the rhizome and can be as long as 10-12 inches long. The plants expand into new areas by growth of the rhizome at its terminal end. If these are cut they do not re-grow. Cutting rhizomes by mechanical means—such as a boat propeller- can kill the plant and cause vacuae in the beds which may not quickly fill in. Skimming over the surface the “flats” in Jim Wilcox’s skiff at forty-knots we could often clearly see bottom—and the elongate propeller “scars” in the turtle-grass beds where as Jim noted..”some ‘boat cowboys’ ” had “a problem” keeping to the channel at low tide. These scars were quite common on the bay bottom..”too common” remarked Jim.

Many fish feed among the turtle grass beds. Some use the beds to hide from predators, seek shade or shelter or to stalk prey, while many others are fish-herbivores which feed on the grass itself. While fishing for Speckled Trout, Jim threaded a white, rubber-shrimp on a 2-0 lead-head lure for each of his two “sports”. He directed us to cast out and bump the lure back along the bottom. Invariably we would get a sharp strike on the first or second pump of the rod tip. Then we would have a sharp battle with the resistant trout, ladyfish, pinfish or drum to get it to the boat side and into the ice box or bait well on the stern of the boat. On several occasions, missing these first strikes and retrieving the lure closer to the boat, I could watch it clearly through the crystal clear and shallow water as it bounced among the thick turtle grass and patches of dead weed that Capt. Jim called “underwater tumble weed”. On several occasions I watched as a trout or a drum would lurch out of a clump of turtle grass to pounce on the lure.

Manatee Grass is very similar. It grows along the bottom attached to long rhizomes, but the Manatee grass favors slightly deeper water. On our way back to Bud and Mary’s one day, Jim Wilcox stopped the skiff over a deep hole where Manatee grass grew profusely. The leaves on this plant, which were aligned by a strong current, are longer and cylindrical rather than flat as they are in turtle grass. Jim indicated that the rhizomes are not buried as deep in the mud as are those of the former species. So they are more likely cut and damaged by boat properllers. “Maybe that’s why they are only found in these deep holes” suggested Jim. Jim indicated the name “manatee grass” is result of the fact that this species is a preferred food of manatees. But we saw none feeding on it. Though Jim says he is on the lookout for them since they are often found in the Bay but not in the flats. Among the Manatee grass we did find circular open patches bare or grass which were occupied by large “breadloaf” sponges. Indeed to me they did look like large loaves of those artisanal Italian round loaves—I love so much.

LANDING ON CARL ROSS KEY

Carl Ross Key is located in the northwestern end of Florida Bay, bounding the Gulf of Mexico. It is about 35 miles northwest of Upper Matecumba Key and about an hour’s trip by speeding skiff from the village of Islamorada (Spanish: “Purple Island”). Jim Wilcox our guide landed the skiff there after we successfully fished the near-by channel on a flooding tide. My fishing buddy Bob R. caught a big barracuda in the channel and landed it, while later on, I hooked in to a 'huge' yellow-tipped shark. The shark pulled like a locomotive and bent the stiff, gamefish-pole, threaded with braided, 100 lb test line into an unsustainable “c” curve. The rig was set for tarpon (which have no real teeth) so there was only a two foot monofilament leader attached to a big 2”0” hook. I had the shark on for a good arm-wrenching twenty minutes as it pulled us and the skiff along, while Jim, using the long boat pole, tried to herd the critter, by poling the boat toward shallow water to where we might get a look at it. Finally, it swam into a dead-end channel, and to get out it had to double back past the boat…as I reeled in furiously to take up slack we did get to see the dorsal fin and the long angled-up tail as it swam between the boat and the bank. But the change in direction must have scraped the mono over those sharp triangular teeth and after one more powerful run--the leader parted and the fish was gone.

“Fare thee well Mr. Shark” I called after it, as Jim swore in anger over my shoulder.

“Should’a had a wire-leader on that’un in this channel!”

At this point, we were close to Carl Ross Key and Jim suggested we land there for a bit of exploring. On the way in we cut the engine and drifted over shallows, where we caught a few Mangrove Snappers by casting our lead-head jigs with a white rubber shrimp threaded on to the hook. Jim showed us how to thread the shrimp on so the tail fanned out. “Let’s see that one ‘Dr. Rock’,” he said, which was the name he coined for me…there being two “Bobs” in the skiff that day. “Don’t thread it on to make a “c” shape out of the shrimp..leave that hook tip bare…they’ll catch themselves..those hungry little beggars!”

As Jim slowly poled us up to a sandy landing spot on the key, Bob and I caught five or six nice-size snappers and dumped two of the biggest into the ice-chest to keep for our fish supper. We stowed the poles and stepped off onto Carl Ross Key.

“A few years back…this here little key and that one out there was joined up into one long island”, said Jim, but when Hurricane Emily came through here out of the Gulf it beat the hell out of this key--swept the mangroves clear off and made two keys out of one. This here small key is the remnant of that storm,” said Jim, stepping down into the clear water and pulling the skiff’s bow ashore, onto a cream-colored fine sandy mud. As Jim tied the bow to a thick mangrove branch, Bob and I looked at each other and about sixty years each drifted away as we stepped ashore feeling like little kids living out the fantasy of setting foot on a treasure or desert island. It was my first landing on a real “tropical island.” I was fascinated. Jim, Bob and I took a slow walking tour around the small island in bright hot sunlight. The key was only about two acres in extent, but a world away from our everyday experiences.

I observed that the Black Mangrove formed a ring of growth around the edge of the island. As I strolled around I observed that the sand as I noted above. was all of marine origin, a calcareous deposits of sand and mud. Any pebble-sized materials were shell or shell fragments. The sand that formed the key seemed to have been washed up from the surrounding bay. I envisioned huge waves carrying Bay sediment up through the mangroves and over-washing the island. I was glad I was not there at that time. Jim told of several big mangrove trees which were washed off of Carl Ross Key and ended up in Rabbit Basin far to the east. There the trees sat in deep water with its upper branches just breaking the surface. (Later that day, we fished at those very same Carl Ross Key trees. Each tree acted as a barrier to the currents which swept around them, creating a deep hole or depression in the bay mud. The depression was a great attraction to the local fish and each cast, brought a vicious strike by a big snapper, speckled trout, or drum and we hauled in each one the end of the line.)

Back on Carl Ross Key, I made notes on some of the major plants which had colonized the island. Aside from the Black Mangrove (which was in bloom on the day of the visit May 17, 2011) I observed large areas colonized by the common backyard plant known as portulacca It was common in dry hot and exposed areas. While Day Flower, Commelina virginica (or a related species) appeared to occupy areas more protected from the hot sun. In the center of the key, where the substrate was piled a few feet above sea level were lively clumps of dark green Indian Fig (Opuntia humifosa ?) and scattered among them were a few yucca plants.

PLANTS OBSERVED ON CARL ROSS KEY (May 2011)

Black Mangrove
Red Mangrove
White Mangrove
The Day Flower (Commelina virginica) commonly known as the Virginia day-flower, is a perennial herbaceous plant in the dayflower family. It is native to the mideastern and southeastern United States, where it is typical of wet soils. While most members of the genus have thin, fibrous roots, the Virginia dayflower is relatively unique for its genus in having a perennial rhizome. This rhizome may be able to be uprooted and washed along with storm waves. That may be a way in which this plant may have reached the isolated island.

Yucca species possibly (Yucca flaccida) is native to Florida and is found growing on coastal sands, waste places, beach sands, and similar places in the state. Either its seeds or roots could have been carried to the island by waves or ocean or storm currents.

Indian Fig (Opuntia humifusa?) The Indian Fig is found in dry places from New England to Florida. Its fruit is edible and its “pads” can produce a new plant. It is common onnbeach environments in the south of Florida.

Portulaca or Purslane (Portulaca grandiflora?) which is a common garden plant in south Florida and since its succulent leaves and stems can float it is a good candidate to have arrived by storm waves or floating on a raft of weed stems. It is an edible plant and could have served some cast-away (not

OBAMA SIGNS DEFENSE BILL,UNDERMINES OUR ANCIENT LEGAL PROTECTIONS

2012-01-02T18:47:00.000-08:00

THE LAST STRAW, OBAMA SIGNS THE DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS BILL

Just hours before the New Year began, when the nation was on holiday, President Obama signed into law the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, a far-ranging, $662 billion bill that will bring changes in a number of areas.

Obama said he signed the bill with “serious reservations,” particularly over provisions that regulate detention, interrogation and prosecution of detainees.

Obama issued a signing statement, with this bill, practice he decried when his predecessor used them, but which he has used more than Bush in his first two years than Bush used in his eight years. See below where I comment on this practice.

The new law, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, provides more than $660 billion for military pay raises, weapon systems, military contracts and funding for the war in Afghanistan as well as certain provisons regarding how we treat US military detainees.

I predict that Obama will become as notorious as King John of England, in 1215, John, weakened by unpopular wars, high taxes and conflict with the Pope was forced to sign away his devine rights when he put his pen to the Magna Carta. In like manner, President Obama simillarly afflicted and weakened has given his reluctant assent to a law which will cost us billions weaken or abrogate the ancient protections of English civil law embodied in the same Magna Carta (and the Habeus Corpus Act of 1679) which John signed so long ago. History confirms what can happen when - as with King John- a weakened leader must curry favor with his detractors and face determined unprincipled political enemies. In the case of President Obama, who has not encountered a fight he would rather not engage in, and who has been faced with irresponsible adversaries --in the Republican party who are more interested in squeezing the president into a politically embarrassing corner than doing their best for the nation. Ahhh politics!!!

The law signed by Obama weakens the core principles which are embodied in our Bill of Rights and which were derived from ancient English law. The Magna Carta the "great document" of English law, originally drawn up in 1215 AD (and passed into law in 1225), remains one of the core precepts of Anglo-American jurisprudence. In Medieval England the English nobles forced a weakened King John to accept the fact that he did not have the authority to act arbitrarily against English subjects and could not mete out punishment except through established law of the land. That basic premise has remained a part of English law until today. And by the grace of the fact that we were once an English colony and subject to an English King that precept entered and remains a part of our system of laws.

In the late 14th century, two hundred years afster trhe after the Magna Carta was signed, the English also established what is known as the "Great Writ", or the right of Habeas Corpus (Latin: "you may have the body"). A "writ" is a legal manuver by which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention, ( a detention perhaps lacking sufficient cause or evidence). This remedy can be sought by the prisoner, or by another person coming to his or her aid. It has historically been an important legal instrument safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary action by the state. And is essentially a summons with the force of a court order. "It is addressed to a prison official, for example, and demands that a prisoner be taken before the court, and that the custodian of the person present proof of authority, allowing the court to determine whether the custodian has lawful authority to detain the person. If the custodian does not have authority to detain the prisoner, then he must be released from custody. The prisoner, or another person acting on his or her behalf, may petition the court, or a judge, for a writ of habeas corpus. One reason for the writ to be sought by a person other than the prisoner is that the detainee might be held incommunicado. See Wikipedia "habeus corpus"

The right to petition for a writ of habeas corpus has nonetheless long been celebrated as the most efficient safeguard of the liberty of the subject. The jurist Albert Venn Dicey wrote that the British Habeas Corpus Acts "declare no principle and define no rights, but they are for practical purposes worth a hundred constitutional articles guaranteeing individual liberty". See Wikipedia "Writ of Habeus Corpus".

Another two hundred year later, in 1679, the Great Writ was revised and formalized into English law during the reign of King Charles II as the Habeas Corpus Act 1679. The Act of the Parliament formally defined and strengthened the ancient writ, to insure that persons unlawfully detained could not be ordered to be prosecuted before a court of law. The Act of 1679 which is cited as one of the most important statutes in English constitutional history. Though amended, it remains on the statute book (in the UK) to this day.

One would think that our President, Barak Obama, as a renowned legal and Constitutional scholar, (and Noble Peace Prize winner), would have great respect for and a thorough knowledge of these ancient and hard-won legal precedents which form the basis of our own freedoms. Yet just a few hours before the new year..while on vacation in Hawaii, our scholar-President “reluctantly” signed the flawed 2012 Defense Appropriations Bill into law.

The bill has unprecedented and dangerous clauses which undermine and weaken--the very legal basis of our freedoms and protections from tyranny. This signing will be recalled as one of Obama’s most shameful acts, for which he will be remembered for long after he is gone from office. Why is this signing so egregious? For three reasons 1) Obama’s complete capitulation to the bloated “defense” establishment and their corporatist, Republican supporters. 2) It's massive cost spits in the face of those who are concerned about our deficit and our present strained economy. 3) And his use of a signing statement as a way to camouflage his political timidity and hide the true evil effects of the bill. Here are a few of the highlights.

This 2012 Defense Bill should have been vetoed. It has several dangerous provisons not the least of which is one that it would permit the president to incarcerate American citizens and throw away the key...no due process, no habeus corpus...no provision for the accused to be faced by his accuser. The bill requires that foreign fighters captured by the US be held in military custody, outside the reach of civilian law. (Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, not much of a historian or legal scholar himself though he ischairman of the powerful House Armed Services Committee, said the new law aimed to "offer a structure for holding those who would do us harm." McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) said the structure was one "both parties found preferable to the ad hoc course the White House has been on for nearly four years.") Obama--often referred to as a Constitutional scholar homself-- agreed with this provision. But his signing statement claimed he would "waive any military custody requirement if he decided that were the best course." But what does that mean? That just indicates his present disposition on this matter, it could change and so could the interpretation of those coming after him. But Obama, with a stroke of his pen, in Hawaii has overturned that long history of legal tradition for Americans. Does he not realize that--even if he were not to use these onerous provisions, some others would gladly implement them--they are there in the legislation--perhaps against their political enemies. Just take a look over your shoulder at the crowd in Iowa from which one of whom "may" become president. They are frightening. Can you imagine one of them as president in 2012 ! Then we will have Obama to blame for signing this bill.

In one provision which would have rightly barred the transfer of detainees to foreign countries--the notorious policy of sending detainees to black sites for interrogation and torture--a policy first used by George Bush--Obama used his signing statement to clainm thta he would ignore that provision since it "hinders the executive's ability to carry out its military, national security and foreign relation activities" i.e. his policy of rendition. A shameful statement for our President to make!

Internationally, the bill attempts to curb Iran’s nuclear enrichment program by outlining penalties against Iran’s central bank. The legislation also freezes some $700 million in assistance until Pakistan develops an acceptable strategy for dealing with improvised explosive devices. One positive element of the bill, but which does not justify its passage, orders the Defense Department to finance an independent assessment of overseas troop basing “in light of potential fiscal constraints and emerging national security requirements.”.

Other changes include reducing our half-a million man army by less than 3%, to a still bloated 547,000, while increasing the pay of active and reserve troops by nearly 2%. It also authorizes the Defense Department to conduct offensive operations in cyberspace. The stress our troops have been exposed to in the last decade is underscored by the incorporation in this bloated budget of some necessary mental health assessments for our troops. To be implemented before deployment and several months prior to deployment and a year and a half or longer before redeployment. The purpose is to identify post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal tendencies and other behavioral health conditions. Though these efforts may identify the truly debilitated, a more meaningful action would make less not more use of our military which is supposed to be a "defense" force not an imperial shock troop. Our people are not mentally or psychologically prepared for service in occupational forces of an imperial guard. We are a peace loving people who seek only to expand democratic policies. Were we to limit the deployment of our young men and women to only those instances when our nation's homeland was truly threatened and our military were deployed for legitimate reasons we would have fewer such cases of dementia.

The most recent case underscoring the stress we have placed on our military in the last years of aggressive military adventurism came to light in the first days of the new year when a deranged former Army specialist with several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, shot up a New Years eve party wounding four, then escaped to hide away in the forests of Mt Rainer National Park. There, blowing through a road block he cold bloodily shot and killed a young female National Park ranger the mother of three children. He escaped into the forest where he died in an ice choked winter stream of winter exposure--wearing only a T shirt, jeans and one sneaker. A sad story of what w can expect from the thousands of our troops suffering from stress and mental disorder. We asked them to fight in an unnecessary war. They know they were had. We will pay for the mess.

If that was not serious enough to cause the president to table the bill or outright veto it. There is more.

Let’s look at the economics---the price tag. It will cost six hundred and sixty billion dollars ($660,000,000,000) or two thirds of a trillion dollars, a figure which represents more than 4% of our GDP. That amount (annual military expenditure as a percent of GDP) is more than any other modern industrialized nation, (except for a few oil-rich Arab countries which we twist arms to buy our military hardware). In general terms, we spend by far more on our military than any other nation in the world. The next most militarized nation is China. But they spend a paltry 114 billion dollars on their forces, or less than one-fifth of our expenditure, or only less than 20 cents of every dollar we spend. In fact if we were to add up the actual military expeditures or all of our potential world “enemies” (let’s say:China, Russia, Iran) it would amount to only 174 billion r bout 26% or a bit more than one-fourth of what our expeditures are. Why do we do it? It can not be for simple“defense” as our Republican politicians like to claim. It makes no sense to spend so much out of proportion to the function we claim to be supporting. I prefer to see it as an ingrained tendency toward imperialism as well as a form of “social security” for the defense-industry consortium. Thus we can conclude that the expenditure is bloated in the extreme. Most observers conclude that we could probably slash that number in half and still be the top dog in the world.

On another count, let’s underscore the fact that 40% of the $660 billion price tag or more than a quarter of a trillion dollars ($ 264 billion) or nearly three hundred billion of that near-trillion dollars will have to be borrowed and paid for with interest by our children and grandchildren. For what? Will it make their future lives safer or better. I think not. We are mortgaging our children’s future incomes to swell the coffers of some corporatist in Washington. For those in the Republican Party, who would not lift a finger to continue aide to the unemployed, or help the ill and the elderly—if that expenditure would raise our deficit, this monstrous sum, about a third of our budget, is quite all right with them and the only complaints we hear from that quarter are that the sum is too little. At a time when we are laying off, teachers, librarians, policemen, and closing schools all over this nation, and the President and Congress are toying with which of the prime support strands of this country’s existing and notably skimpy social safety net (such as medicaid, medicare and social security) are to be cut, the President has the temerity to give the “defense” department carte blanche for more and better (?) bombs, planes, destroyers, drones and other hardware none of which will never figure into improvement of this nation’s dismayingly aged infrastructure, or to change its long term energy dependence on imports, increase domestic jobs—and provide impetus to our faltering economy. Why continue to support the bloated military-industrial complex up to just above the figure they demanded? Obama has no answer for us.

And finally, the signing of this bill "with reservations" was a misleading, politically cowardly, self-serving act. The Constitution gives the President the right and responsibility to veto a bill. That is what the Founders planned, that the President as the representative of the people would have the final review of a piece of legislation. If he found its provisions to be unwarranted or unwise, or dangerous, it his, the President's, responsibility to reject the bill by vetoing it. But President Obama shirked his duty to the people. If the President had reservations he should have had the courage to veto the bill. I'm really sorry to have to say this but the President acted like a wimp, he signs this flawed bill, then presents some smarmy reasons why he should not have signed it. That is not the leadership we need now--or at any time. Obama has besmirched his brand with this last act--the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Get the picture?

RJK

ONE REASON FOR HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT, OR LUDDITES CORRECT: NEW TECHNOLOGY KILLS JOBS

2012-01-01T18:13:00.000-08:00

The Regency Era (1811-1820) in England is celebrated here and in the UK as a glittering period in British history, perhaps mostly as a consequence of Jane Austen's popular fiction and the BBC's elaborate, sumptuous TV productions. But in reality, beneath the ordered upperclass surface depicted in fiction was a more turbulent and complex world. Early in that period Britain was struggling with the madness of King George III (the British tyrant of our American Revolutionary War era). After he had slipped into the final stages of dementia, his dissolute, self-indulgent, extravagant son (later George IV) took over to become regent. George ushered in a period of grandiosity and of excess in style and substance. Like our own time, then, there existed a great disparity between rich and poor. The nation had been for many years enmeshed in constant warfare: with the French, the Americans, the Irish Rebellion, and the Napoleonic wars. As in our own time, at the war's end social and economic malaise infected the country. As well, like in our own post-war period, it was a time of technological advancement and social unrest associated with rapid industrial expansion. For example, a new loom invented in France in 1800, the Jacquard loom, was introduced in the first decade of that century which could mechanically reproduce patterns in lace and silk without the need of highly trained weavers. A few years later in 1804 gas lights were invented and first used. About the same time, the first steam locomotive was built. In 1809 Humphry Davy invented the first electric-arc light. And by 1810 an advanced mechanical printing press was developed by Koenig in Germany that would enormously speed up the publication of books. The introduction of these technologies into the economy caused labor disruptions, changes in employment-opportunity, as well as spikes of unemployment. In all these cases, as it is today, the goal for the manufacturer was to increase the amount of product produced and to reduce production costs, almost always these efforts were effected by reducing the amount of costly (and sometimes troublesome) human labor in the process. Nothing has changed, today we have the many of the same problems.

It was in Nottingham, England in this period (1811) of change and unrest, almost exactly two hundred years ago, that the owners of several thriving textile mills of that region, manufacturers of expensive lace and stockings, introduced a form of the new Jacquard loom as a means to increase productivity, reduce cost-- and enlarge their profits. This new loom could be operated easily by cheap, unskilled labor. The mill owners summarily fired the male skilled weavers they had employed and hired mostly children and unskilled women in their place, paying these new employees only a small fraction of the wages the men had earned. The impact on the economy of the local communities was disastrous. The disgruntled, unemployed mill workers joined together to stage protest marches, demonstrate and write and distribute pamphlets which encouraged others to join them. Dissatisfaction and unrest grew apace with the numbers of unemployed. In desperation, some turned to violence to protest their plight and that of their families made destitute by the new machines.

All across the British midlands the unemplyed lace workers formed gangs of homeless, angry groups, much like our 2011 "Occupy Wall Street" Movement. These early "occupy" demonstrators, known as Luddites, after a probable mythical leader-- Ned Ludd (possibly the shortened appellation of Edward Ludlam) a real person who had become notorious after having destroyed a stocking frame loom in a fit of rage earlier in this period. The Luddites directed their ire, not at the mills or the owners who had fired them, but instead, they focused their rage against the new technology--the new looms-- which they saw as the primary culprit, which had altered the circumstances of employment and eliminated their jobs. The Luddites gave speeches and wrote pamphlets calling for reprisals against the looms, encouraging workers to rise up and smash their looms. These publications were often signed by "King Ludd". They made raids on mills where they attacked and destroyed the new mechanical looms which they concluded had cost them their livelihood. In response the mill owners called upon the British government to put down the violence and unrest, which the governemnt did with dispatch and harsh determination. The police and army eventually rounded up hundreds of the Luddites. Many of these were tried and duly executed for crimes, while others were transported to Australia and other distant colonies of the Empire. The problem did not end, and the discontent did not abate. As the introduction of the new looms spread, unemployment grew in number and many continued out of work. In time other working-class movements of discontent erupted as the century continued-- eventually giving rise to the more successful British labor movement.

Luddites were seen in their day as "anti progressives". Their statements and pamphlets made clear that they were opposed to any new technologies that would reduce the need for labor and put people out of work. They claimed technology would eventually put all workers in the poor house, adding that technology would make the poor poorer and the rich richer.

The prevailing perception today is that the Luddites fears were unfounded. In fact most modern economists refer to the episode of unrest as an example of an economic misperception known as the "Luddite fallacy". Modern theory indicates that new technologies, rather than encouraging unemployment--stimulate growth. Labor saving technologies should increase production of goods, causing the prices of those goods to fall and demand for them to increase. Increased demand should encourage investment in new enterprises and increase employment.

But is that really the case? In modern times we have many examples of new technologies making jobs obsolete each in turn altering the labor market. In the last several decades we have seen the impact of the electronic revolution in the workplace and the explosion of the internet as a tool of business. Both of these phenomena have radically transformed the workplace. Many jobs were lost. I can recall in my own experience, radical changes in the workplace, in an office where a long row of secretaries once worked, the desks are now gone and the room is bare...perhaps the space is now converted to storage for paper stock. The work of that row of individuals has been taken over by sometimes more savvy, foolproof, smaller, and cheaper laptop and tablet computers. But where have the secretaries gone? Who employs them now? Many of them have retired, have joined the ranks of the unemployed, or are working at lower paying jobs.

Economists theorize that during the early years of the industrial revolution, the fears expressed by the Luddites..that new machines were going to make their labor obsolete and drive them to the poor house were indeed a fallacy. They concluded that since machines could compete effectively with human labor their insertion into the labor equation debased the value of human work. Luddites envisioned that technology would eventually devalue human labor--making the poor poorer (that was all the poor had to bargain with--their labor) and the rich richer. And the the progress of technology over the last two hundred years can be cited to support that thesis that these fears of technology and machines were unfounded and fallacious. Economists would have (were they around) assuaged their fears..explaining that as technologies developed and jobs were lost, new jobs would be created in other developing fields. Their theory might be explained this way--In the case of the stocking mills--the new technology would increase production of stockings which would cause the price of stockings to fall. More and cheaper product would permit more people the ability to afford to buy stockings. New outlets would open which sold these products. These new enterprises would need more employees. One might even envision that the existing lace and stocking mills making more product and greater profits would expand production. Expansion would entail hiring more help, perhaps to construct new space and set up new looms, and such activities would require labor and new jobs, etc, etc. In other words, in the early years of the industrial revolution and on into modern times technology created new jobs in the same or new industries at a faster rate than old jobs were being made obsolete. That was the theory....and it proved to be valid for a long time perhaps two hundred years. But two centuries of innovation and job losses have squeezed human labor into a smaller and smaller space. Can we continue this process ad infinitum?

Is it necessary to state that over the last two hundred years, technology and machines have grown more and more sophisticated? Most of the former hand-made products or goods produced by operators using machines are now made by totally by machine. The retreat of human labor into areas where machines could not (it seemed) intrude has finally ended. With only few exceptions, in the workplace today machines can do almost anything humans can do. Almost all the heavy lifting, back-breaking-labor-saving and rote work, and repetitive tasks that humans once did are now commonly completed by machines. Then too, technological advancement has proceeded over the last two-hundred yeas at an exponential rate, while the appearance of new job opportunities arise more slowly, described better as a linear rate. Thus, today jobs are being made obsolete faster than new jobs arise to replace old ones. Now rather than just eliminating heavy labor, or rote and repetitive tasks, new machines are smart. The can learn and in a sense think-not quite as well as humans--but on many tasks--they exceed human endeavor-and for one important reason, in certain tasks they make fewer mistakes.

In recent times, economic theorists note that while technology grows at an exponential rate, consumer demand--perhaps confined by population increases- grows more in a linear fashion. Thus at some point new technology will not produce the fall in prices and increased demand which tends to encourage further investment and growth of employment. We appear to have reached that point where the Luddite were right--machines are replacing humans in jobs so rapidly that they may make paupers of us all (and soon too those who cringe in the intellectual woodwork). Alas it seems clear today that the rich who own the technology and the machines will continue to amass wealth.

So the Luddites of 200 years ago, might have had it right. New technology --the machines--are taking over, pauperizing our working classes and concentrating wealth in the hands of the corporatists and oligarchs.

Get the picture?

RJK

"I MISUNDERESTIMATED": George Bush on the Iraq War

2011-12-17T15:51:00.000-08:00

The Iraq War formally ended yesterday (December 15, 2011) with a whimper. There was no fanfare. Our leaders have no "stomach" to face up to the necessary reevaluations or objective analysis of the war as an abject, monumental mistake--or the effects of a "misunderestimate" by George Bush. The announcement of the war's end by President Obama, stirred not the holiday shoppers away from their seasonal pursuit of bargains, or disuaded the pundits, bloggers and talking heads from continuing to focus their attention on the lack-luster hopefuls in the Republican race for the presidential nomination. Rather than the Iraq war the attention of the pundits these last few days has been devoted to the erratic and unstable Newt Gringrich (in some places now being referredd to as "Newtzilla Gingrich") , who in spite of his inflammatory rhetoric (like encouraging preemptive war with Iran, and denigrating Palestinans as a people) is ahead in the Republican state polls. This fact rightly worries the GOP establishment.

The scarcity of Iraq war coverage is understandable. No one wants to talk much about past failures. But here again our national press corps and media fail basic Journalism 101. These very same journalists and print-encrusted institutions who mostly fell into obedient line with the warmongers and neocons during the run-up to the war, stumbled embarrassingly into into jingoism and yellow journalism during the war, and now that it is over, they fail their journalistic duties again by largely ignoring the unpalatable history of this war, eschewing a critique of its failures on many fronts.

Last night, observing the final Republican “debate” before the upcoming Iowa caucuses, I heard not one word about the Iraq War, our sacrifices there, or its formal ending on that very day. Instead, unbelievably, there was considerable saber rattling by the candidates for a new war with Iran—over that nation's purported nuclear ambitions. It is difficult to fathom what short memories our citizenry have and how blatantly some of our political leaders pander to fears and biases of minorities in their audiences. (Regarding this matter--Dr. Ron Paul stood out as the only rational and honest voice on the stage.)

Thus ends George Bush’s war, its rationale based on lies and innuendo, which cost taxpayers a trillion dollars up front (and an estimated two-trillion more over the decades to come). Over its nine-year course, Bush and his minions sacrificed the lives of 4500 young Americans, were responsible for the maiming of another thirty thousand, and caused the deaths of well more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians (by actual body count, but standard statistical studies have concluded that the war related loss of life was closer to half a million) and made refugees of some two to four million. And for what purpose? Iraq was not involved in the 9-11 attacks and had no weapons of mass destruction. But the war was not only an unmitigated first-order disaster to Iraq, fulfilling America's initial war aims to bomb that nation “back into the stone age”. (Today, as a result of those military efforts and failures and corruption in reconstruction, Baghdad, continues in squalor nine years after the invasion, with a limping, fractured infrastructure and with insufficient potable water and only a few hours each day of electrical service.)

But if the war was a terrible descent into an abbatoir and charnel house-hell for Iraqis, its outcome has been little better for the USA. This awful nine-year conflict bookends one of the ugliest and dark periods of American history. The war era exposed us as a nation which could forget its best motives and history to become barbaric invaders and occupiers, flouters of international law, torturers, “trigger-happy cowboys” and for some of our top leaders--the epithet "international criminal" has been properly scrawled under postings of their visages.

In its economic impact at home, George Bush's "war-on-the-cuff" has been scored as one of the three main causes of our 2007 financial collapse and the Great Recession which followed—a calamity which continues to plague us today. The war exposed us as a superpower with extraordinary technical and military strengths, but with little depth and sophistication. Having only superficial understanding of the region, and with pathetic little knowledge of the people, their language, and their religion or culture our President audaciously attacked a sovereign nation. At the head of the world's most lavishly supplied and costly military (we spend more on our armed forces than all the other world nations combined!) we swept a pathetic enemy before us like desert rats and quickly and easily occupied Baghdad. But once there our bumbling attempts at imperial occupation led to chaos and disaster.

On all fronts the war failed. The lightly concealed real objectives of the war were to carve out a petroleum rich nation for our oil companies to exploit. As well, our military display was meant to demonstrate our overarching military power, perhaps to dissuade potential terrorists, or to put fear into our regional "enemies" Iran, Russia and China. But as the war wore on, with displays of grandiosity (our "embassy" the size of a small city state in Europe) and exposes of torture and brutality at Abu Ghrahib as well as revelations of incompetence in the face of a stubborn and determined insurgent population, the war became the quagmire some had predicted. The conflict, instead of publicizing our strengths, revealed our incompetence, arrogance and the limits of our military power.

Our President's war on Iraq sullied our national reputation, and aroused much of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims against us and our erstwhile allies in the region. Futhermore the war encouraged the nuclear arms race. In the face of our awsome attack on Iraq what world leader could not have noticed the strrategic advantages of a nuclear arsenal? Could they ignore the fact of our ability to invade and dominate a non-nuclear Iraq, while nuclear armed North Korea only experienced attempts at harsh diplomacy from us.

As we had hoped, our intervention did alter the local political situation--but not to our advantage . Without clearly thinking through the results of our invasion and occupation, we found our actions to be largely counter productive. For one, it enhanced the power of neighboring Iran by eliminating Iraq as a military counterpoise, creating a new regional problem for our leaders. For another, we appear to have opened economic opportunities for China which is today making oil deals in Iraq, and opening mineral mines in Afghanistan as we case our battle flags and prepare to leave. The fierce resistance of the Iraqis to American occupation and our inability to establish a pliant Iraqi "democracy" means we leave Iraq with no more leverage than what we had over the old Iraq. Rather than a demonstration of power, our failures in Iraq gave strength and encouragement to other Arab popular opposition groups in surrounding nations. The chaos in Iraq in no small way helped to stimulate and encourage the Arab Spring...a political movement which has to-date radically changed the political landscape (and not to our advantage) in a wide swath across the Arab world.

It is well this war is over. Without public condemnation, it seems that now only God may forgive those of our leaders with the blood of our nation's troops and of innocent civilians on their hands. If only it were true that we as a nation learned something from our mistakes and setbacks. Alas, listening last night to the Republican side of our quadrennial political discourse, it appears that we have understood little and digested less of our recent past in Iraq. Due to our unwillingness and/or inability to face up to our mistakes and failures, we are relegated to repeat them over and over again. I fear we have suffered much and profited nothing from our travails these last nine years.

Will we all have to live on in silence with the continuing fall-out of this monumental disaster? Have our young men and women who sacrificed their bodies and lives done so in vain? Have we wasted trillions of dollars and years of national effort? The answer to these questions is sadly, yes. But only if we continue to sweep the past under the rug and fail to honestly reevaluate our mistakes and their causes--and in no certain terms condemn those who so horribly lead us astray.

Get the picture?

MYSTERIOUS NUCLEAR CLOUD OVER CENTRAL EUROPE

2011-11-13T12:12:00.000-08:00

JAPAN LIKELY TO BLAME

I read yesterday (November 12, 2011) of a strange but interesting low-level occurrence of radioactive Iodine 131 detected in several central European nations. Reports came from Poland, Austria, Czech Republic and today (November 13) Hungary was added to the list. The isotopes were detected in the air, were minimal and non-life threatening according to the various nation's atomic monitoring organizations. But the cause and origin remain unknown. One report tried to blame the occurrence on leakage from area hospitals, or even more unlikely, on the patients themselves who were treated with Iodine 131 and then exude these isotopes in their breath and body fluids! That sounded far out. Most recently, the origin was attributed to a Pakistan nuclear power plant at which a leak occurred on October 19th of this year (Though half life of Iodine 131 indicates such a leak would no longer be detectable). The plant was pointed at as the culprit. But some further research indicated that the radioactive hot water leak remained within the power plant. Even if it had escaped it would have, if anything, released radioactive tritium, but not Iodine. Iodine is released by a nuclear explosion, or the meltdown of the core of a nuclear power plant, such as what happened at Chernobyl, or more recently in March of this year, at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant in Japan.

The geographic location of the countries reporting Iodine 131 in their air, the general east to west drift of upper-air currents, as well as the pattern of the recent upper air jet streams suggest that Japan's Fukushima plant is the source of this pollution. Yes far away Japan. Today’s jet stream map does show a branch of the mid latitude jet with a distinct north to south branch in the upper air pattern. The minot branch moves south to curve down over Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Austria. Though the half-life of radioactive iodine is about eight days...the speed of the upper air currents could account for the low level concentration and pattern over these central European nations. So please stop blaming the Pakistanis. Pakistan lies far to the east of where this is being reported and the major air currents move toward Pakistan not from it! The general pattern suggests the Japanese. Why is this not being reported in Europe by the IAEA? Hummmm?

The story also points out how far reaching and potentially disastrous a nuclear melt-dowm like Fukushima is. It’s a world-wide problem and will remain so for as long as those nuclear cores are exposed to the air. The plant needs to be encased in a concrete sarcophagus as soon as possible.

Get the picture!

OIL CONSUMPTION IN 1948

2011-11-02T09:47:00.000-07:00

LIFE ON A BARREL A YEAR

We are all concerned with energy consumption these days. Not long ago, I wrote a response to those who would attempt to exploit oil resources in sensitive areas, and included data on how much oil we consume as a nation (See: “Drill Baby Drill”: rjkspeaks.blogspot.com, October 17, 2011). I noted there that each day, our nation consumes nearly 19 million barrels of oil! (See the CIA factbook to check that number at:https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2174rank.html) In Drill Baby Drill, I state that if those 19 million oil barrels were aligned end to end, they would form a continuous line more than 10,400 miles long which would stretch from the North Pole to the tip of South America and then some. We burn it all up each day and blithely pump the waste products of combustion into the world-atmosphere as oxides of carbon and nitrogen. These substances have an effect on the world climate and they rightly have us and the rest of the world seriously worried.

In a recent edition, The Economist magazine (October 20, 2011) pointed out that a recent compilation of world temperature records, (by Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Group, led by Berkeley University physicist Richard Muller) seem to have put to rest much of the real and imagined controversy regarding this issue. The Economist's editors (not a left-progressive group) state that there is now little question concerning the validity of global warming. This latest compilation of terrestrial weather station data going back many years clearly indicates a slow rise in temperature over the decades with a sharp rise of 0.9 degrees C (nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit) in the last twenty years.

Elements within our government, as well as industry and business leaders have resisted acceptance of the fact of massive, fossil-fuel-induced climate change. These business and government elements wish to avoid the dire and difficult alternatives, i.e. the need to use less fossil fuels and decrease business activity (as they see it), or face a drastically altered world with increased crop failures, seasonal wildfires, more frequent violent tropical storms, intense winter cyclones, disaster floods, and widespread famine for the near-future. But now after this recent analysis it appears there is little doubt that to curb the warming trend and change the inflection of the rising temperature curve we will have to radically alter our oil consumption habits.

So how do we fare here in the US on this issue? Would great changes in our habits and consumption be required? Recent data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) indicate that US energy consumption from about the 1980s to 2006 remained fairly steady, with each US citizen, on average, consuming 336 million BTUs per person. ( Note: A British Thermal Unit (BTU) a traditional measure of energy defined as the amount of heat energy needed to raise one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit.) Three hundred thirty-six million BTUs is nearly five (5) times more than the world average energy consumption per person (recently tabulated at about 72 million BTUs). So here in the USA we can be considered to be the world’s energy hogs.

Our total energy consumption includes sources such as petroleum, coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydroelectric, and some wind power. According to the EIA (for 2007) of all our energy sources, petroleum is the largest, comprising about 39% of the total. But for this present analysis we can best visualize our consumption if we focus on how we use petroleum. Let's consider the 19 million barrels of oil consumed in the USA each day, thus we use (19 x 365 days per year = 6935 million barrels) close to 7 billion barrels a year. Dividing that figure (7 billion bbl/year) by the US (2010) population of 308 million (7000m/308m = 22.7bbl/person/yr ) reveals that we use approximately 23 barrels of oil per/person/year.

To summarize, we can state that in recent times, (ignoring the other sources of energy we use) we as Americans, with a population of less than one-third of a billion, or about 20% of the world population (2011 world population seven (7) billion), use five times more oil energy than the world average. We each consume collectively an average of about 23 barrels of oil per day. With those figures, the USA (as the primary per capita consumer) should be in the forefront of moderating our usage of fossil fuel, if anything is to actually happen to improve world consumption of fossil fuels and slow world climate change. Unfortunately, here in the USA, our government in the grasp of the giant oil companies, we remain largely in the denial stage.

Reflecting on the fact that each of us use as much as 23 barrels of oil each year, I could not but help thinking six decades back to a childhood experience of living on my grandfather's small farm in rural Long Island where we used only one barrel of oil annually. I still have a vivid image of grandpa's single barrel of "kero" sitting in front of his old woodwork shed. That was the sole source of petroleum energy in his annual economy of those long ago days. (Also notable was that one barrel of kero was probably also a wholly domestic product--unlike today, when more than six out of each ten barrels of oil product are imported from abroad.)

So as an exercise in examining how much our consumption has changed over the years, I invite my readers to accompany me on a brief trip into the early part of the last century, when life was much simpler and at least in a rural environment a small family could survive quiet nicely on one barrel of petroleum-product over the entire year.

In the late 1940s, the growing fear of the infantile paralysis epidemic in NYC reached crescendo proportions, especially in Brooklyn, NY, where I lived. The prior summer, 1947, when I was seven years old, two of my school mates were struck down with polio and were whisked away from their families, to be treated and put into quarantine in a distant hospital and not to be seen again in the neighborhood. My mother was understandably anxious for my health as the summer of 1948 approached. She and my father quickly made the only arrangements she could, and so like the rich kids who lived north of 13th Avenue in Dyker Heights whose business-owner and professional parents sent them off to summer health-camps, just before the summer of 1948, I was sent to live in the country too. I spent the next few summers of my young childhood as a kind of happy refugee from the city.

My elderly grandparents, who spoke English fluently, but preferred to speak (even to me) in their native Italian, lived a simple country life on a small freehold in what was rural Long Island of that time. I concluded many years later after traveling in Europe that their lives during my stay in 1948 were closer to that of 19th century Europe, than America of mid-20th century. So life there for me was like going back some some fifty or sixty or more years into the past. Thus my observations are not typical of the ways of the 1940s, but more of an earlier age. Still my observations can add to one's appreciation of how simply all our ancestors once lived and how little they depended on the oil which has become today our lubricant, fuel and near-lifeblood. Later, as an adult, I came to realize how much that time away had affected my perceptions and my life. I often looked back with great respect and affection for my grandparents, who welcomed me and shared their lives with me. The experience gave me a perspective which few others my age had and it and afforded me the unique experience of a real-life window into earlier times.

Grandfather stored his yearly oil supply in a great, old, copper barrel, located at the end of the long, gravel, driveway. The 50 gallon round-bellied barrel lay on its side on a weathered, rough-wood frame in front of grandpa’s equally-weathered work shed. The barrel's greenish-tinged surface had a few dents here and there. Abrasions could be seen all along the the thick, rolled-metal rim, where the reddish copper metal shone through. The spigot, situated about ten inches off the ground, had a well-worn solid-brass handle and below it a curved copper spout. The marks of wear and dents suggested to even my young mind that the barrel was old and must have had a long, former life somewhere else and probably far away. Directly below the spigot a bare spot in the grass indicated that the spout must have dripped during use, causing a few drops of kerosene to splash to the ground. The spattering kerosene killed the grass in a near perfect circle leaving a persistent patch of barren, gravelly soil among the otherwise rank weeds and grass which grew luxuriously around the barrel-frame and along the rough stone foundation of the weather-beaten old shed.

To a young imaginative boy, the barrel's smooth, sun-warmed rounded surface suggested the wide back of a big dray horse, and sometimes, when I was alone, I would mount up my "horse" for a ride, thumping my heels into the hollow metal sides to goad my "barrel-horse" into an imaginary gallop and down grandpa's driveway. I never gave a thought to the substance within. Oil was of only minor if common use at that place and time. Grandpa was more concerned with the local fire-wood we collected from the orchard and the surrounding woods.
I certainly could not imagine the all-powerful, all-engrossing role that the smelly liquid in the belly of my play-horse would come to play in all our lives in the decades to come.

The small farm was basically self-sufficient--except for the kerosene we burned. Benzene (as grandpa called it) was used mostly as as the fuel for our lamps, and lanterns, but sometimes too, it served to thin paint, or to clean up after a painting job, or even as a degreaser. On occasion an old coffee cup-full was also used to start a stubborn wood fire in wet weather, or for what I liked to watch best -- to start a bonfire. Grandpa did have a small kerosene stove which he sometimes used to as a space heater in the house on very cold winter days, and in the spring he moved it to the chicken coop for the new hatchlings. But not much else. The barrel was filled only once or at most twice per year. Grandpa got along in 1948 with very little oil, or as he called it "benzene".

Looking back at our energy use in 1948, I calculate that my grandpa, myself and my grandmother, the three of us (ignoring the many guests including my parents who arrived for short stays during the summer) each consumed only a little more than one-third of a barrel of kerosene--mostly for lighting. The energy in each barrel of kerosene is, as is petroleum, rated at about 6 million BTUs. Thus, each of us in that year of 1948 consumed only 2 million BTUs of oil-product per year. That is only a small fraction (less than 1%)of what we use today (336 BTU) or even small compared to the the world average at 72 million BTUs per year.

LIFE ON TWO MILLION BTUs PER DAY

What was my life like in that place in 1948? Perhaps revisiting that time may broaden our understanding of how people lived on only one-third of a barrel of oil a year, rather than 23 barrels a year as we do today, and too, generate an appreciation of how dependent upon oil our lives have become in a time span of little more than six decades.

The pleasant, five-room bungalow, with a great open attic, had no indoor plumbing, no electricity and no heating or air conditioning, and no wood-fireplace. Our water-well was outside too. I recall that the interior was mostly cool and comfortable in summer and warm in winter. Although the attic where I slept was hot in a summer's mid-day, during the night at that time of the year its high roof and big windows kept it cool and comfortable. The overarching shade trees and a lovely apple tree which poked its branches up to my attic window must have helped to moderate its temperature too.

Fresh drinking water of the finest taste and purity was pumped up from deep underground in our back yard. A long-handled cast-iron lift-pump, gave access to fresh, icy cold, water from, as grandpa would proudly and often proclaim, "a hundred and twenty feet down". The pump was relatively new in 1948. Prior to its installation, grandfather had to depend mostly on the cistern's rain water, for washing and cleaning, but for good drinking water he had to tow his little frame wagon a half-mile up St. Johnland's Road to fill them at the artesian well located there. When guests with automobiles arrived, he would readily impose on them for this chore. Though I never witnessed it myself, I heard tell of my aunts and uncles strapping the water jugs to the running boards of their vehicles for the ride up to the free-flowing spring across from the pond.

All lighting was by candle or kerosene lamps. There were no street lights either. On an dark evening to visit the home of grandfather's boyhood friend, "Lo Zito" , grandpa, with me tagging along, carried a big kerosene lamp which swayed as we walked casting scary shadows in a great spreading a circle of yellow light all the way for the quarter mile distance in pitch-black darkness over sandy roads. Cooking and house-heating was accomplished with wood burned within a big, black, cast-iron kitchen stove. In the summer, and the warmer seasons of the year, a similar outdoor stove was put into operation outside the house under the big grape arbor.

Grandpa loved to garden and grow flowers and grandmother preserved fruit from their fruit trees and vegetables from their garden. The dried and split wood from the orchard trimmings and from the surrounding forest fueled the wood stove for all their fruit and vegetable canning and food-preservation activity. They both loved to read and listen to classical music and Italian opera. But with no electricity, reading occurred by cozying up under the yellow glare of the big kerosene lantern, and music appreciation with the aid of a wind-up gramophone.

The subsistence farm supplied us with meat, eggs and vegetables. Fresh brown eggs were a great staple, and each week grandpa killed a hen which edged past her prime egg-laying capacity. Some years they also raised a pig or two. An let me not forget the rabbits which were kept in a hutch attached to the back of the chicken coop. But the vast majority of our meals came fresh directly from the big garden in summer.

When we walked to town (the only way to get there), we often pulled grandfather's home-made wood-wagon upon which we piled our purchases. Sometimes, on the way back, if there was room, grandfather offered me a ride. On our way to town, we passed the local dairy farm where we might stop to purchase farm-fresh un-pasturized and un-homogenized milk. For this purpose we carried our own metal milk jug with a tight fitting metal cap which the dairyman filled for us. (Today that farm is long gone and its are fields filled with houses. But the big maple trees along the road remain, but each time I pass there I can still envision in my mind's eye the big old house with its barn and wide barnyard.) If the weather was warm on these trips to the dairy farm, we covered the milk-jug with a wet towel to help keep it cool on the walk back home. Arriving home, the filled milk jug was placed on the top of the ice block in the bottom of the ice-box, and there it kept sweet for a few days.

Grandfather made his own wine from grapes he grew on the big grape arbor attached to the house. These were dark blue and juicy New York Concord grapes, the vinifera varieties were not thought able to survive on Long Island at that time. He also ingeniously distilled brandy from the wine he produced. He roasted his own coffee, and ground the roasted beans in a hand grinder fresh when they were needed. (During the roasting process, one of my boyhood chores was to help keep the small stick-fire under his coffee roaster going by adding little dry twigs in a regular manner, while grandpa rotated the squeaky roaster handle. The cylinder-axle squealed and scraped rhythmically, punctuating the sound of the beans sloshing around nosily within the roaster . Every now and then, grandpa would remove a few hot, smoking bean from a small sliding door on the side-wall of the roaster to test for color and flavor. He would crush a bean between his fingers and bring it up to his nose for a sniff. The smell of roasting coffee beans was intoxicating to me then and the scent of roasting beans bring back to mind those days sitting in the shade of the grape arbor roasting green coffee beans with grandpa. He also made his own pasta and daily, grandmother baked her own crusty Italian-style bread. They put up jars and jars of tomatoes, pickles, peppers and other vegetables which lasted them all year long. Their lives were busy and well directed. There was no boredom or question of ‘what do I do next’.

As each day wound down, and night descended grandpa would go out to the big kerosene barrel and fill a small, metal, beaked-jug. With the fill-jug in hand, he made his rounds to each of the big kerosene lamps and lanterns in the house. He would top up the each oil reservoir if necessary. At each one, he removed the glass globe and rolled up the oil-soaked cloth-wick to trim off the burned section neatly with a small scissors he kept for that purpose. Each wick had to be cut perfectly square so it would burn evenly and brightly at night. Each globe was cleaned with crunched up newspaper too. If the flame burned properly, the glass globe stayed nice and clean from day to day. At night, reading at the kitchen table, or writing a letter home to mom and dad, I was cautioned to not turn the wick up too high, for it would make a smoky flame which blackened the inside of the globe.

There was no town garbage collection in those days. Trash from the house was separated into edible food-waste, compost, or burnable stuff. The food waste was fed to our dog, or the chickens, or dumped into the hog pen. The other materials were either composted, burned or buried. But then again in those pre-packaging days there was not much solid waste. Clear plastic, styrofoam, cellophane and such eith had not been invented yet or was not widely used. Everything that could be used for some other purpose was used again, and sometimes again, after that second use. As noted above our food scraps were separated into meat and vegetable and offered to either our great big, white Italian Spitz dog named“Beauty”, or tossed to the chicken flock. Since these jobs were mine I soon learned that chickens would eat almost anything. When a pig inhabited the small hog pen, it shared in the waste food and vegetable trimmings too. Anything not considered edible by man or beast, but was organic in nature was either tossed onto the manure pile to decompose or slipped into the kitchen wood stove to add to the heat that was boiling the water in the boiling pot.

There was no “food packaging” per se, so there was little waste of that sort. Old newspapers and a few cardboard boxes were the most common paper products. But the former were often used for packaging, where today we would use some form of plastic bag, while the latter was often saved up in a basket next to the stove to be used to start the wood-fire in the fire box. The few other packaging materials we did come across were often recycled or reused some way. For instance, the nice cloth sacks from the bags of chicken-feed were saved to be made into smaller sacks for storage, or cut and sewed into long sand-filled "sausage rolls" to block cold air seeping under the the back door in winter, or ripped and cut into patches to repair the knees of my worn overalls. Burlap was a common coarse fabric and we often saved such bags for our trips to the beach for bagging our mussels and clams. Jars and cans were kept for storage containers. Wire from the hay bales was carefully wound up and saved for other uses. String was rolled into balls. And even the "silver foil" in which grandpa's pipe tobacco came packaged was saved too.

Grandpa was quite a good tinsmith and would use old tin cans to create other new and useful things with the waste metal. He made a lovely and functional handle and latch for the shed out of a large tin can. He famously made a very fine coffee roaster from waste sheet metal and several large waste tin cans.

Manure and chicken droppings and the straw bedding from the chicken coop and the pig pen were piled behind the coop for composting. Corn husks and coarse plant stems and the remains of my garden weeding chores were placed on that pile too. I recall seeing grandfather out in the vegetable garden and around his especially-loved Cleome flower-beds early in the morning carrying his own extra-tall bedroom potty. He sometimes used night-soil (from the night-potty) on some of his favored flowers and even in the vegetable garden. In the latter place he would plow a special trench some distance away from the corn row, or the tomato row where he would sometimes use this fertilizer on plants he considered to have “special needs”.

There were only a few items that could not be burned for fuel, composted, or fed to the dogs, pigs or chickens. When something of this category had to be disposed of there was no other option but burial. Every now and again grandpa had to dig a hole to dispose of something he could not recycle. But it was not too often. As a teenager coming back to visit the old folks, I was saddened to be witness to the scene of our old ice box meeting that fate. This event occurred many years later when the house had been electrified and the old ice box had been replaced with a refrigerator. The ice-box held its own in its old spot for several years, serving as bug-and-vermin-proof container for flour and grains, but finally it had to be disposed of. Grandpa simply had a hole dug big and deep enough for the ice box dug and slid it down there. Of course he had one of my younger cousins remove all the wood-trim and usable screws and hardware first. I was sorry to see it go. But that was late in the 1950s and well after the time I consider here.

That old ice-box with it two heavy doors and wood trim was for obvious reasons used more in summer than in winter. In winter the screened-in back porch became the refrigerator and the ice-box was used to store other items (as noted above). In summer, it kept our fresh milk cold and sweet, a few pieces of cheese and a few other items such as perhaps a bucket of fresh blowfish grandpa and I caught off the "pier" on the Nissequogue, or some special cuts of meat that needed storage before being prepared to eat.

Ice for the ice-box was delivered to the farm in big rectangular blocks on a regular weekly basis. In summer, the ice man's arrival was a great attraction for me and my cousins and neighbor's kids. We gathered under the shade of the great maple tree in front of grandpa’s house on hearing the rumble of the ice truck coming up the road. Joe Lombardi, the ice-man, always chose a nice shady place to park his truck, where his delicate cold-cargo would be shaded from the sun’s direct rays. He chased us kids away from the back of the turck as he pulled back the heavy damp cloth covers and canvas that protected the great blocks of ice. Then, like a surgeon going to work, he reached for his ice pick held in a special holster on his belt and rapidly pricked out a line on the dark ice with fast deep punctures. At each strike of the point small ice chips flew into the air as the pick made holes with radiating cracks in the dark-blue ice. Some chips flew up into the air and some larger ones always fell at our feet on the sandy road. These we quickly picked up to squeeze in our warm hands so as to melt the ice into cool water that carried away adhering sand. Then we thrust the cold chunks of melting solid into our mouths, laughing and smiling with difficulty and delight.

With our mouth's full of ice, our eyes followed big Joe's flashing ice pick. The cracks in the ice connected up and soon the small block fell away--often releasing new chunks of fractured ice, which we quickly gathered up. The big burly man then scooted us out of the way again, as he reached for the two-handled ice tongs hanging on the back of the truck. He grasped grandpa's ice block with the tongs and rolled the glassy soild up on to his leather-padded shoulder. We followed him into the house, watching the drips of melt-water slither down the leather pad on his back. I followed him as he carried it through our back porch and into the kitchen. There he placed it in the ice-box which had been cleared and ready for it.

After Joe left, grandpa piled any remnant pieces of ice from last week's delivery on top of the new, sharp-edged, fresh block, and covered them both with a thick layer of newspaper. The paper slowed down the melting process. Then, he replaced the items that had to be kept very cold, placing them directly on top of the damp newspapers. The ice melted and absorbed heat from the food and milk. The dull-gray, tin-lined interior had a little hole at the bottom where melt-water was directed away, through a small rubber hose that passed through a small hole in the floor boards, where the melt-water dripped down into the sandy crawl-space under the house. The big, thick ice-box door was closed tight and kept that way. Nosey eight-year old-kids were not allowed to poke their heads in there.

Once,when the rubber ice-box drain became blocked, grandma asked me to crawl down there to clean the tip. For that purpose, I carried a long piece of straw (to clear the tube) and a nice beef bone to offer to Beauty (whose realm I was invading). I found the the hose-end laying in the little wet spot it created. Some gunk blocked the opening which I cleared away. Crawling back out I had to slip below, a dusty two-inch-diameter galvanized metal pipe which sloped from the floor above and entered into the ground near the cover of the concrete cistern. There too, was a two-inch vertical pipe which I recognized as the pipe which connected to the sink pump directly above. I knew about the cistern, but I had not seen this part of it before.

The Cistern

When the house was built in the 1920s there was no source of water near-by. Later, as noted above, the deep water well was dug in the back yard near the screened in back-porch. [Potable water was available from an artesian well just off of St. Johnland Road, (across from Harrison Pond) about a half-mile from the house. In those days grandpa would pull his wagon down there and load it up with jugs of cold (52 degree F,) clean, fresh water. Guests who arrived by auto would be encouraged to add to the water supply by carting water jugs and filling them at the artesian well. I visited that old well in the 1960s and it was still pumping plenty of cold clear water.] So for those reasons a cistern to collect rain-water had been built under the house and a utility sink and a hand pump was installed in the kitchen and connected to the rain water cistern for cooking, cleaning dishes, washing up and sometimes for clothes-washing. (Major washing of clothes was carried on outside in a big tub with a brown soap and a wash board. The waste water from those operations was dumped on in the garden or in the orchard next to a deserving tree. And the clothes were all dried on a clothes line strung from one big tree to another. Clothes were kept in place with wooden clothes pins.) The squeaky hand pump in the kitchen had a straight line pipe directly into the rain-water cistern below the house from which it pumped water into the kitchen sink. But it required to be primed with water first before it would pump any fluids up. For that purpose, a jug of water always sat on the side board of the kitchen sink. You poured water into the well in the top of the pump, then worked the handle up and down until gradually you would hear the water rise in the pipe and pour out through the square end of the spout and spash noisily into the base of the metal sink. Then it would gurgle down the drain which connected to a pipe that carried the waste water out into a low-spot in the orhard. Where it soaked into the ground.

“This is cistern water. Don’t drink it," grandpa warned me. But being a curious eight-year-old, I had to try it. I knew it was rain water and I had tasted rain drops and melted snow. So I just assumed it was OK to drink. I pumped some up into an old jelly jar glass and looked at it. It was clear and clean. It smelled fine too. It was cold and tasted good to me. So I never heeded grandpa’s warning, and when no one was looking would drink the cistern water regularly if I was inside and thirsty. I never had any bad digestive effects to my knowledge. Of course, the deep well-water, which pumped cold water up from 120 feet deep was the best, especially in the summer. It was cold enough to frost up a glass jug. The pump was relatively easy to operate even for a small boy since the pump-handle was long and the 120 feet or so of rods were of a light wood. Every now and then grandfather's well-man came to service the pump and "pull the rods" so as to replace a small leather valve at the bottom of the length of rods.

Before the house was built, grandfather had to construct the cistern six feet deep and six or eight feet in diameter. From his own account he and his sons (my two uncles) hand-excavated the cistern and laid up the bricks. They lined the interior with concrete and built a tight fitting wood frame cover which sealed it from the outside, and only then was the house built over it. This pool-like container was connected to the roof gutters by the pipe I describe above. I discovered how it was operated one day when a summer thunderstorm forced us to seek shelter indoors.

Grandpa and I were out in the orchard, where I was helping him (or really just watching) as he prepared to graft two branches of one type of an apple tree onto another. The stock tree was a well-grown Red Delicious twelve-foot apple tree at the time and grandfather had cut off a three-inch diameter main branch at about eye level (his). The cut was neat and horizontal. He then split the stock branch in two with a small sharp metal wedge. He then took two small branches taken from a neighbor’s Golden Delicious tree. “This tree will have two types of apples,” he explained, as he sliced the base of each finger-thick branch into a very thin wedge, which would fit neatly into the split in the branch of the stock tree. He aligned the branches in the wedge so that their bark would match up with the bark of the stock tree. Then as he tied the whole branch around with twine and as he applied some thick substance to seal the stub of the branch the sky darkened and a breeze rustled the leaves along the ground.

“It’s going to rain, Poppy,” I said, looking skyward.

“Yes it is!" he said, gathering up his tools. "Let’s get into the house, perhaps it will rain enough to fill that cistern today.”

With the wind whipping the leaves on the apple trees to show their undersides we rushed toward the back porch. As we passed through the portal and the screen door slammed closed behind us, a great thunderclap boomed from the darkend sky, as if to emphasize the threat of rain. Big rain drops slammed into the sandy bare soil of our back yard, each forming a little impact crater with a tiny mud ball at its base. Outside, I watched our big white Italian Spitz, ‘Beauty’, hurridly raise himself up out of his warm sand-wallow. Looking up at the dark sky, he shook his long white fur clean of adhering sand, then he turned to enter his lair under the porch. His long chain dragged through the sand leaving behing a long furrow spotted with rain drops. Rain pattered loudly on the roof above us. Then, after a second thunder clap, the rain fell in buckets.

“Ahh, just what we needed, a good two inch rain storm to to refill our cistern,” said grandpa happily, walking over to the corner of the kitchen behind the wood stove.

“See up there?” he asked, pointing a dusty cob-webby corner behind the stove pipe.

I looked to where he pointed. Near the corner, partly hidden by the stove pipe, I could see a small, hand- carved wooden handle. The European-style letter “A” was inscribed on the wall on one side of the handle and on the other, was the letter “C”, where the point of the handle then rested.

“See, Robbie,” he said, "A" is for “aperto” and "C" for “chiuso”.

Just then, grandmother, called out from the sitting room, “Ottavio, e piove, ricorda! Faccia la cisterna!” as if to remind poppy of what he should do.

But Grandpa just waited. He turned to look out through the kitchen door, past the porch screens where it now appeared dark as dusk, and the rain continued to pelt down on the roof and pour over the full gutters in sheets.

Another call came from the sitting room. "Ottavio!"

“Aspetta” he answered, as he turned, and slowly slide a chair along the floor into the corner. He stood next to the chair, his head cocked, listening to the rain patter down on the roof, and gurgle along the gutters.

“Grandpa, why are you waiting so long, arent we wasting a lot of good rain water” I asked.

“We must wait, Robbie, 'Patzienza'. He added, with a patient smile, "We must first we let the hard rain wash over the roof and clean the gutters, only then can we open the valve to permit the clean water into the cistern.”

“Oh, I see!,” said I, as a vision of the summer roof with its burden of fallen leaves, moss, twigs, and probable bird droppings up there.

Finally, when grandpa thought the roof and gutters were clean, he stood on the chair and turned to handle to "A". I could hear the water gush into the cistern pipe.

"Come here Robbie," called grandpa, as he walked over to the sink. "Ascoltai a qua," he said, putting his hand on the handle of the cistern hand pump.

I leaned over the sink basin. From the primer-well at the top of hand-pump emanated the faint gurgling and splashing sound of rain water pouring down into the half-empty cistern.

Grandpa looked contnet. The cistern was filling, the vegetable garden and the orchard were being watered and all was well in his world.

And that’s how life went along in a time when only wood and a few gallons of kerosene supplied all our energy.

I am not suggesting here that we all go back to a 19th century life of burning wood and using one barrel of oil a year... but there remains much to learn from a review of that time, and the striking effectiveness, ingenuity and efficiency of our forefathers---who had to make do on much less, and found inventive ways to accomplish their goals. We must find a means to emulate their ingenuity and new ways to deal with our own--different--situation in a similar effective way.

We can do it!

Get the picture?`

OBAMA: IRAQ WAR OVER

2011-10-23T13:40:00.000-07:00

BUT ITS ECONOMIC IMPACT AND THE EROSION OF USA MORAL AUTHORITY REMAINS TO HAUNT US

Yesterday, Mr. Obama notified us that the Bush war in Iraq was over and most of our troops will come home by December 31. Obama has been angling to “have his cake and eat it too” by keeping a substantial force in Iraq within our numerous military bases there (built at tremendous cost to our taxpayers) and still being able to state “our troops are leaving”! But he has been denied that political advantage. After a war in which (as President Bush promised) we bombed Iraq “back into the stone age”, at a cost of over four thousand American lives as well as the deaths, directly or indirectly of some 600,000 Iraqi civilians, and displaced or made homeless more than four million more Iraqis, it would be difficult to imagine that they would welcome us to stay on. (Even today, nine and one-half years after the invasion, and billions of US tax payer's dollars spent-- the level of electric service, availability of sewage treatment, and access to safe, fresh water sources remain below that of pre-invasion Saddam Hussein levels.) Recent polls clearly indicate that the vast majority of Iraqis are eager for us to depart. Furthermore, the present Maliki government would not sign a Status of Forces Agreement which would have guaranteed “immunity of our troops from prosecution under Iraqi law”. After the tragic Blackwater fiasco, and lack of judicial response to multiple cases of indiscriminate killings of innocent civilians by what some have described as "trigger-happy" American troops, it would be hard to see how they would agree to such a clause.

While on the home front, Americans, are ready to turn their attention to our own economic problems, as we suffer through the Great Recession of 2007. This change in direction of the nation's thinking is partly a reflection of the natural waning of September 11 anxieties after a decade of our leaders' fear-mongering. It is also a result of the realization that "something went radically wrong" in the last decade that needs change. (These feelings have been clearly manifested in two recent mass movements, the "Tea Party" uprising on the right and the "Occupy Wall Street" movement on the left.) For the more astute observers that "something" was to a large extent a result of President Bush's “unnecessary-wars-on-borrowed-money-policy”, coupled with his penchant for reducing taxes on the wealthy, and dangerous determination to expand banking deregulation.

Here in the USA, in these days of economic suffering we too are uniformly happy to see our troops withdraw and government reduce unnecessary expenditures abroad, and are ready to fore swear jingoism. Practicality seems to rule now. Few of us can see any advantage in the costly stationing of US troops in countries which pose no actual threat to us (except those of the right-wing radical fringe and the talking-head generals, who have a personal stake in these issues--and for that reason--rather than doting on their every word-- their judgement should be taken with a grain of salt). The sentiment for troop withdrawal is particularly acute for those who realize that these military costs are paid for by the US government borrowing forty cents on every dollar we spend. And recall that each pair of boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan costs us approximately one-million dollars each. Obama now claims that only a few hundred may remain to protect the massive “US Embassy” in Baghdad. That edifice, bigger than the Vatican City State, was built with no thought of cost or practical function, but with the idea that it would long-remain a "camouflaged" well-fortified outpost of US imperialism, and now with the withdrawl of December 2011 it seems, it will be remembered only as great monument to the stupidity and chicanery of Messrs Bush and Cheney--and the neocons and other Republicans and Democrats who facilitated their actions.

That the troops are coming home, we all "thank God for little mercies". But it is very sad that our President Obama, who spoke so eloquently against this war, failed to give this speech on the first day he took office. He would have saved many American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, and perhaps we would find ourselves better positioned strategically than we are in presently.

And for those Bush revisionists and "die hards" who continue to try to claim that the “Iraq war was worth it”. One must only take a look around us at the current economic, political and foreign-policy landscape to appreciate what a disaster the last nine and one-half years have been. Our nation, first ravaged by the 9-11 tragedy, then the disastrous eight years of the Bush presidency, was served poorly by the new Obama administration, which failed to correct the nation's errant course and simply let its wagon wheels fall into the deep errant ruts of the past administration, making no effort to move off in the right direction. Mr. Obama failed to use the massive mandate of the 2008 election to expose and/or punish those who got us into this financial, foreign policy and economic mess. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama chose to continue many of the very same failed policies, attacks on civil liberties, expansion of war powers acts, illegal renditions and targeted-assinations, expansion of wasteful wars, and misguided economic policies that compounded our problems rather than solved them. Only now, perhaps too late, to save his presidency he has changed course when his is at the nadir of his power.

Thus, we see that the events of the last decade have culminated in a cluster of problems for us: our national debt and deficit, the costs of the “three trillion dollar war” in Iraq, the failure of the financial sector, our persistent high unemployment rate, the nation's anxiety and unrest, and the political stalemate in Congress. As a result, we have exited from the miasma of this Iraq war as a diminished nation. Our reputation as a great nation has been sullied on all fronts. Our economy has suffered, our bonds downgraded, our dollar falling to levels not seen before relative to the Chinese yuan, our military is weakened and forced to come to terms with its limits in its geographic reach, as well as the now too obvious bounds of military force as the means to achieve our strategic and long term national goals. Finally, and sadly, even our once vaunted moral authority has suffered what appears a fatal blow.

Some may ask who cares about moral authority? Why should the nation be concerned with what the French or Germans or those third world nations think of us? The answer is that it does count, particularly in an unruly world, where, as has been so well demonstrated to us in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the aerial bomb, the foot-soldier, and the muzzle of a gun have only limited effectiveness. We must lead by example and gentle coercion of the majority. Our moral authority is the primary element of our leadership tool kit. For more than fifty years after WWII the US led the world as a model of justice and adherence to the rule of law, a model which should be emulated. Our efforts were successful in the post war world. Much of our culture of national morality was a direct outgrowth of the outstanding early model set for us by our founding fathers: Franklin, Jefferson, Adams and Monroe, and the documents they authored--our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. Our model of justice, humanity, and law set us apart from other nations. In this regard we are truly exceptional. And those nations who emulated us have come to see great rewards for their efforts. In a globalized world our adherence to these laudable cultural tenets permit us to lead and modify world opinion. That was a time when our word counted. Our efforts permitted us to direct ourselves and others toward in ways which would eventually lead to a better, more just, more humane post-WWII world. But today we find ourselves on a precipice where one more step in the wrong direction would be fatal.

One example of how far we have fallen on this score came to public attention yesterday October 22, 2011 in the Washington Post when it became clear that our once unchallenged moral authority has fallen apace with our military set backs, and economic woes.

When the UK-based firm Hermitage Management Capital became embroiled in a charge of tax fraud and evasion in Russia, they hired Russian attorney Sergie Magnitzky to represent them. During Magnitsky's investigation he uncovered evidence that absolved the UK firm from guilt of tax evasion, and revealed, in fact, that Hermitage MC was the victim of fraud perpetrated by powerful Russian financial institutions. During the long litigation period Magnitsky was himself charged with colluding with Hermitage and arrested on trumped up charges. He was incarcerated in the infamous Butyrka prison in Moscow where he appears to have been pressured to abandon and recant the case he had developed. He refused. During his incarceration, he fell ill. Medical attention was limited, and as he continued to resist recanting his positions, he was moved to increasingly harsh confinement conditions where his affliction worsened and eventually died of his ailment. A Russian court ruled his death the result of purposeful negligence and the doctors who treated him and prison official were tried and punished with prison terms. The UK based Economist magazine reporting on this story called his case an example of torture. Other exposes followed and "the Magnitsky case" soon became a cause celebre in the UK and on the Continent.

After Magnitsky’s death the case received further wide publicity in the UK and Europe, where eventually the EU Parliament voted for the banning of entry into the EU of sixty Russian officials who were deemed responsible for the brave attorney’s death. The Canadian Parliament followed suit, resolving to deny visas and to freeze Canadian assets of this group of Russian individuals. Here in the US, Senator John McCain co-sponsored the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Act in October 2010, which would forbid entry into the US of the sixty individuals named in court documents. Recently, it was revealed (see October 22, Washington Post) that the Obama Administration put into effect the legislation and added these sixty people to our “banned for entry” list.

The Russian response remained muted as the statutes voted on in both the European and Canadian parliaments went into effect, but when the US chimed in, they attacked us viciously. The Russian foreign minister Alexander Lukashevich lashed out in what the Washington Post called “ unusually strong terms: stating: “Such (US) moralizing-calls appear especially cynical against the background of the practical legalization of torture in the US, special prisons, kidnapping, and mistreatment of terrorism suspects, the indefinite detention of prisoners in Guantanamo, and uninvestigated murders of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

And so is this is the world-view of the USA, after the GW Bush-Obama administrations? Is this what is said sotto voce and behind our backs? I fear it is how we are perceived around the world today. When we speak out on moral issues that need and deserve our support, will we be ignored in the future? Such an outcome is both sad, unsettling, and unfortunate for us, as a sign of our decline, and a loss of moral leadership for the world as a whole.

Note: From Wash Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russia-retaliates-against-united-states/2011/10/22/gIQAxKac6L_story.html)

Get the picture?

DIRTY OIL- THE ATHABASCA TAR SANDS

2011-10-21T13:05:00.000-07:00

Years ago as a boy summering in rural Smithtown, I recall pleasantly our country road, which was then just a natural glacial, yellowish, Long Island sand. My friends and I happily walked barefoot all summer long on the sandy byways we called “dirt roads”. But when I was about ten or eleven, the Town of Smithtown began “oiling" the roads. One day they arrived at our isolated place with with big trucks and a smelly tar-spreader to end our barefoot ways. They raked over the ridged and wash-board-rumpled sand and when smooth and level, they simply sprayed a thick layer of black oil over the dry sand. The oil soaked in and coated the grains. A thin layer of more sand was spread on top. The result was a smelly, tarry mess for a good week. But soon the volatiles in the oil dispersed into the air and the tarry surfaces hardened.

In our days, that tarry stuff is most likely man-made, the waste product of the distialation process, but it also occurs naturally, as tar-seeps such as the famous La Brea Tarp Pits in California. But perhaps one of the earliest exploited tar pits in the western world, are pits found on the western Greek island of Zante, (aka Zakynthos). The pits are located on the south end of Zakynthos near the little village of Keri. It is about ten miles from the port city of Zakynthos. I visted the Keri tar pits with my archeo-geology students in the late 1990s. We all hired motor skooters for the trip over winding country roads to a spot near the sea where tar seeped out of the ground. We collected a few samples and gathered there to retell the tales of how the ancient Athenians exploited this very seep to calk the bottoms of their ships...the ships that eventually saved the western world from being over-run by the Persians, when they helped defeat the the Persian navy under King Xerxes at the battle of Salamis in 480 BC. The Keri tar is fluid enough to flow readily in the spring temperatures on Zante. But other deposits of petroleum which remain buried close to the surface or exposed to heat underground (perhaps from intrusive igneous deposits) may loose their volatile components and turn into a black, viscous, natural tar, like that on our roads. Like asphalt roads, they too are mixed with coarse sand. These oiled-sands are essentially the same as what we find occuring naturally in the now famous exposures of the Canadian and Venesuelan tar sands. The tar sands deposits, similar in appearance to the stuff that first covered our early Long Island dirt roads, is now being considered--after the more-easily recovered and cleaner burning "sweet crude" has been exploited--as a source of difficult to extract but avaialable oil to meet the world's unquenchable thirst for petroleum.

Though the historians and archaeologists may not agree with us, we can campartmentalize human history into periods or "ages" based on the predominant fuel or source of energy. Today, since the middle of the last century (and the close of the “Coal Age”) we live in what we may call the “Petroleum Age”. Whether we are always aware of it or not, petroleum surrounds us, it colors our walls, fires our home furnaces, fuels our transportation vehicles and, as well, perhaps most importatantly, petroleum-derived fertilizers nourish our crops and aid in food production. Each morning we dress ourselves in synthetic fabrics produced from petroleum, then (almost) all of us drive to work in autos powered by gasoline an oil derivitive. Our vehicles roll along on sysnthetic rubber tires made from petroleum, on roads surfaced with a bitumen which is the end, waste-product of the fractional distillation which produces the gasoline, diesel oil, motor oils and many other of our industrial products. The thick gooey stuff we call “tar” that ends up in the bottom of the of the oil distillery after the gasoline, heating oil and diesel are vaporized off is used to coat roofs, spread on asphalt driveways, and used too as a general sealant. The vast majority of the tarry black stuff is what is mixed with sand and gravel and spread down on our roads to provide the smooth surface upon which we find driving so pleasant. But lets return to what is happening today in western Canada where large deposits of a similar substance (to our modern day road surface) is found just beneath the soggy soil and muskeg in the northern spruce and hemlock forest zone.

The dark bituminous substance that occurs in western Alberta in Canada was well-known to the Cree and Athabascan native-Americans of that region in prehistory. The Cree, like the Athenians, used the black sticky substance to waterproof their birch-bark canoes.

In the late 19th century, Canadian geologists mapped the extensive tar sand beds in western Alberta just below the surface of an area the size of Lake Superior or the US State of South Carolina (or about 30,000 square miles)in areas of forest, river valleys and muskeg terraine. The Economist (http://www.economist.com/node/17959688) reports that in that large zone there may be up to 173 billion barrels of recoverable hydrocarbon oil-equivalent. If that amount is verified it may have a value of some $16trillion dollars at modern day prices. And may support the US seemingly unquenchable thirst for oil (at 19 million bbls per day or 7 billion barrels a year) for some (173/7 = 24) twenty four years.

Late in the 20th century, about 1967 these deposits, which are easy to find with a simple earth probe, so there is no expensive and unpredictable drilling necessary, began to be exploited for their oil content. Several Canadian companies bought up virgin forest land, and by means of massive earth-moving equipment removed ten or fifty feet of muck, clay, and sand overburden, pumped out the ground and surface waters which seeped back into the excavation into a near-by large lake and removed the underlying layer of sand, rich in bitumen or tar. These operators transported the tarry sands to a near-by facility where the petroleum component was separated from the sand using lighter hydrocarbons (such as gasoline or kerosene) and large volumes of fresh water taken from the near-by pristine rivers. One serious problem is with the fresh water used to separate and extract the oil substance. It is estimated that the extraction and separation process requires between two (2) to five (5)barrels of water for each barrel of “oil” produced. At the present time with only a small percent of the massive resource exploited, existing operations use as much fresh water from the Athabasca River as does the entire city of Calgary, Alberta, which uses the river as it fresh water supply.

The mixture of water, tar-sands, and solvent is agitated to dissolve the “bitumen” into the solvent. The frothy mix is then separated from the sand and other solids which are dumped into the waste pond and the now dissolved bitumen is barreled and moved off site to an conversion plant where it was treated like a heavy oil. In more recent times, the diluted bitumen is mixed with liquefied natural gas to produce a more fluid, less viscous mix, termed “dilbit” which can be piped to refineries. The disadvantage is that this substance is particularly noxious were it to spill .

There are many problems with this enterprise. The extractive process is another form of open pit mining similar to what is used to extract coal from coal beds in Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. The overburden is removed and dumped as spoil, in our eastern USA the coal seams are extracted and the land pushed back in a generally vain attempt to reconstruct the original natural surface. But in Alberta the soil is a mud and the land is marshy and wet. Water, soaks the deposit and dissolves the toxic substances which are a part of the bitumen fraction and is carried away into the near-by river system. These waste waters are pumped into “tailings ponds”, the waters of which become toxic to all forms of life---particularly migratory wildfowl which in their annual passage attempt to alight in these waters and must be constantly driven off. (recent reports document thousands of migratory wildfowl dying in these ponds) Other dissolved materials enter the river Athabasca River system and pollute it locally and downstream from the mine area. Air pollution is a consequence of the separation process as the solvents used are volatile and can and do pollute the atmosphere. There is no evidence that the disturbed landscape can be returned to function either as farmland (which it was not suited for prior to mining) or to forestry or functioning wildlife habitat. Secondly, this is just another way (but a more messy way) to exploit buried carbon and add it (and the sulfur and other minerals it contains) into the atmosphere as pollutants and greenhouse gases. Furthermore, since it takes a great deal of energy to separate the bitumen from the sand and then dissolve the “thick petroleum” fraction into a solvent to create a liquid form---both the mining and extractive process uses up a great deal more energy than lighter “sweet crude” oils which are extracted by drilling. It is estimated that the extraction, processing and burning of tar-sands-derived-oil generates somewhere between 10% and 45%more greenhouse gases than normal oil drilled from wells (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coming-to-america-tar-sands-from-canada).

The advantages from the oil developer point of view is that the resource is in a “safe” country, not likely to be attacked by insurgents or to be nationalized by a new and unfriendly government, and too it is close to the US market and refining facilities.
Some have referred to it as the only “free” world oil outside of the 70% of the world’s oil reserves of the OPEC nations.

Finally, one major problem is that Canada is planning to build a pipe line to its southern boundary the Keystone XL pipeline to carry “dilbit” to specialized plants in the USA. It represents another dangerous and potentially messy operation which like the Gulf oil spill can create a toxic, disaster over the areas it traverses. We have cause to worry.

DRILL BABY DRILL--A RESPONSE

2011-10-17T07:26:00.000-07:00

A constant refrain repeated by some presidential candidates is to drill for oil in the USA to "generate jobs" and make us "energy independent". I’m paraphrasing here, but this is the essence of the politician's blather: “We have plenty of oil down there! Just get the EPA off our backs and we can be energy independent--and create jobs as well.”

My take on this is that the effort would not be worth the few additional years of wasteful oil consumption we would generate and the jobs produced would be mostly related to the massive environmental clean-up we would need after such an extensive program of national exploitation.

The truth is we once did have plenty of oil down there, but we have used much of it up. One of our problems is the way we use this scarce resource. Our oil consumption is the highest in the world. We got used to the idea that oil was cheap and fell in to wasteful practices. We waste oil driving oversized cars and living in McMansion-style houses. Wastefulness and a steady increase in consumption ate into those reserves which were slowly depleted. US production of domestic oil peaked in 1970 at about 10 million barrels per day (MBD) a rate at about what Russia, today’s top producer is pumping now. About that time (1970s) our wasteful, profligate usage first outstripped our domestic production and we had to begin importing oil. But importing oil did not change the way we used this commodity. At the present time we import more than half of the oil we produce.

According to the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency (EIA) today the US consumes 18.8 million barrels of oil a day (18.8 MBD). That is a staggering figure. To get an impression of how much oil that represents, we might imagine aligning that number of oil drums end-to-end (the drums are a standard 35” or 89 cm high) over the Earth’s surface. Were we to begin at the North Pole, the barrels would form a continuous line @10,400 miles long, stretching from the Pole to a point beyond the very tip of South America at Tierra del Fuego! [After the recent BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill which spewed a massive 460,000 barrels of oil into Gulf waters to become the nation’s worst environmental disaster after the Great Dust Bowl of the 1930s my readers should have a good image of what great volumes of oil looks like. But it is worth mentioning that the total spill-volume of that disaster, even now continuing to show up all over the Gulf, was only a bit more than 2% of what we use each day! To carry on my illustration from above, the Gulf oil spill represented by lined up barrels would stretch only over a measly 254 miles.]

One reason we use and waste so much oil here in the US is that it continues to remain relatively cheap. Yes! It is hard to believe, but by world standards our oil prices are much lower than other industrialized nations. For example, gasoline prices in the UK (at more than $8 dollars a gallon) are more than double what we pay here. One reason for the lower price is that the USA still remains one of the major producers with about 5-6 MBD of actual crude oil pumped each day. In comparison Russia pumps the most oil (9.9 MBD) and Saudi Arabia is second (@ 9.7 MBD). (You may note that some reports show that the US is producing about 9.1 MBD but that difference, from what I quote here, is the result of adding in liquefied natural gas to the totals. Since we are concerned here with only crude oil, I have used only figures, which represent that commodity.) Since the US is a significant producer of oil, our prices can remain lower and our UK friends and relatives who must pay more. But even with our domestic production (of either 6MBD or 9.1MBD) we have a daily shortfall of some 9-12(or more) MBD which must be made up by importing many, many barrels of expensive oil that accrues to our national debt, compounds our deficit, and adds to our unbalanced balance of payments.

As noted above, using nearly 19 MBD we are the world's greatest consumer of oil and as such we use more than the next three “highest usage” nations combined. Our main top competitors for this questionable accolade are China, (which consumes less than half of what we use or 8 MBD), Japan, (uses 4 MBD), and India, (3MBD). As is plain from these figures, there must be something amiss with our consumption practices when we as a nation of 314 million inhabitants use more oil than the three next greatest consumer-nations with a total population of more than 2.6 billion (for this I estimate China at 1.3 billion, India at 1.2 billion and Japan at 127 million). Our excessive consumption is plainly a function of wasteful practices. Since we produce only about 6 MBD of crude, we have a shortfall to the tune of more than 12MBD which is made up by importing from foreign producers. Thus a probable first answer for those who suggest we attempt to meet our oil needs by "drill baby drill" should be: "Hold on! Perhaps we should first become a bit more efficient in our use of this increasingly scarce and expensive commodity before we begin exploiting our last reserves."

But what about the politician's claims suggesting we can actually find enough oil right here at home (and their statements always imply that these new underground resources would be sustainable over a long time), only if we were to simply get the EPA off the oil companies' backs and let them drill anywhere in the USA?

Let’s evaluate that claim.

Best estimates of how much oil remains underground are just that, “estimates” but geologists have available a great deal of oil-well yield-data from intensively studied places such as parts of Texas and California. With these they can generate reasonable figures of how much oil might be recovered from similar underground reservoirs in other places.

The US Department of the Interior (USDI) estimates the total volume of undiscovered and technically recoverable oil (our proven reserves) in the United States at about 21 billion barrels of oil. That may seem like a great deal until you compare it to our usage of nearly 19 million bbl per day. In one year the USA consumes (19MBD x 364.25 days = 6,921 million barrels a year) or 6.9 billion barrels per year) nearly seven (7) billion barrels per year (7 BBY). Thus, were we to extract all of our proven reserves, it would net us only (21/7=3) or about three (3) years of consumption at our present rate of use.

Furthermore, were we to attempt to extract oil from every possible underground nook and cranny in the nation, (places that would include many environmentally, culturally, and aesthetically sensitive areas such as the nation's outer continental shelves, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWAR) and the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska) we might be able to produce as much as 134 billion barrels of additional petroleum. Thus, were we actually able to glean 134 billion barrels of oil, how long would it last us? Dividing that number by our annual use of seven billion barrels (134/7=19.1) we see that we would have only about nineteen (19) years of consumption at present rates of use...if we were actually able to realize that goal and mop up the last remaining drop of oil on our home continent. It is worth emphasizing that these sources are not "proven" and we might drill many dry holes. Furthermore, the extraction and transportation costs of such an effort (particularly in the Arctic) would be monstrous and the environmental impact staggering. Imagine many tragic events like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, multiplied many times over. A calculation of the cost-to-benefit analysis of such a proposition indicates only modest returns for gargantuan effort. Were we to actually unearth that volume of oil, it would provide us with less than two decades of present-style use. So after perhaps a twenty-three year period of present level use, we would have arrived at a point of total dependency on foreign resources. The costs of extraction would have been considerable, we would have depleted our means of modulating the domestic price of oil, and we would be left with a nation of despoiled and devalued shorelines, scarified landscapes, disturbed natural areas, and nature reserves bereft of life. Drill baby drill would have made some of us very rich, and permitted the rest of us to continue to drive over sized vehicles, but perhaps where would we want to go?

On the other hand were we to preserve these resources and use them wisely over the coming decades they would continue to serve us well. Perhaps in the face of some future existential threat to the USA they would be there for our nation's essential needs. But to drill them dry today for no good reason is a mistake. Those oil reserves should remain in the ground for some future, wise and careful use. So the answer to “drill baby drill” should be: NO! The oil remaining in those difficult to access, ecologically sensitive and far away places should be kept as a reserve. To exploit them now is not a sensible or well thought use of a scarce resource, particularly given our present consumption rate. Let’s keep those Alaskan, Continental shelf, and ANWAR reserves underground until we really need them. Instead of mindless exploitation, let us focus on wise conservation of oil, we can do much more with the resources we have--extending the use out many decades, were we to institute only modest conservation practices now. Perhaps our motto for this endeavor should be: "Conserve baby conserve"!

In another blog I will discuss the proposed extraction of oil from tar sands and so-called oil-shale which are even more fraught with peril. Both extraction processes use great quantities of heat and fresh water to extract the oil the contain.

Get the picture!

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

2011-09-28T11:42:00.000-07:00

US Exceptionalism

Exceptionalism or plain old 19th century Jingoism?

Steel states: that American exceptionalism is based on “the use of individual initiative as the engine of development within a society that strives to ensure individual freedom through the rule of law.”

American exceptionalism is, among other things, the result of a difficult rigor: the use of individual initiative as the engine of development within a society that strives to ensure individual freedom through the rule of law. Over time a society like this will become great. This is how—despite all our flagrant shortcomings and self-betrayals—America evolved into an exceptional nation.

What is it?

Conservative jounalist Shelby Steele (WSJ Opinion Sept 1 2011) describes American exceptionalism as “the use of individual initiative as the engine of development within a society that strives to ensure individual freedom through the rule of law.” Individual initiative…individual freedom, rule of law..if only that were true. All that “individual initiative” and “freedom” is unfortuneately not freely available to all in this nation, but for those whose wealthy predecessors paved the way for them. So it’s not a bad theory to hold on to—if no one looks too carefully at who steadied the ladder for you, while you climbed the rungs. Most Americans and others free of social psychology’s fundamental attribution error would not agree..seeing the exceptional status of America more as “a bargain with the devil—an indulgence in militarism, racism, sexism, corporate greed, and environmental disregard as the means to a broad economic, military, and even cultural supremacy in the world” (op. cit) . Frankly, to my ears, that sounds like what Mrs. Greenburg, my former social-science teacher in New Utrecht High, would have called “jingoism” We don’t hear much of that anymore. I wonder why? Since American exceptionalism seems to fit so snugly with the actual definition of Jingoism…

Jingoism? See: http://www.globalexchange.org/resources/econ101/americandream

[Jingoism comes from a British pub song of the 19th century which went like this:
We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do
We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too
We've fought the Bear before, and while we're Britons true
The Russians shall not have Constantinople!]

I love America dearly as a native son. I was born here more than seven decades ago in New York City, and raised and educated that City. My grandparents and parents were born there too. My maternal and paternal uncles served in WWII. I’ve traveled my beloved homeland north and south and east and west, lived in its countryside, and in one of its greatest cities. I know it as a great land, peopled with kind and decent folk. And my heart knows and loves no other place as well as this land. But loving it does not give me reason to gloss over and hide its faults, its failures and foibles, or give up wishing to perfect it.

There true are valid reasons to be proud. No one can deny that America is a unique and great land. The USA was the first “new” democratic nation. The founding fathers created a “political entity” out of whole cloth. Before we were an actual nation (such as the Germany, France or Spain) our founders forged a new political entity in 1776, and then only afterward, did we create a ‘nation’ of citizens to populate it. That is unique. To accompany that commendable history, our national ideology, based on concepts of liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism and a laissez-faire business environment, all make us the envy of the rest of the world. But, looking back at our nation’s history, we can see our course at times sometimes marred by wrong-headed policies which make a mockery of our great tradition of equality, justice for all. Yes at times we have exhibited pride, greed, injustice, and just plain stupidity.

“Critical thinking” is a much-touted mental process based on logical, unbiased and unfettered thought as well as an active, valid and probing self-evaluation. However, looking “critically” at our own homeland (as any true patriot must) is often frowned upon and viewed suspiciously. Those who hear our questions or with whom we share these ideas, often protest, “Air you with us, or against us?”

But one must ignore such objections. A nation of our size and diversity naturally encounters problems arising from those very characteristics. Others derive from an antiquated and hide-bound, bicameral, presidential system of representation (rather than more responsive, flexible, and democratic parliamentary system); our Senate is the most unrepresentative and undemocratic in the entire modern, western world; and our Electoral College is an unabashed embarrassment to a nation which wants to be considered as “democratic”. Here too we must mention our massive military—the largest, most expensive and most coddled in the entire world. We spend more on our military than all the other nations in the world combined. It consumes more than one-third of our total annual budget. That investment in naked power encourages us to see every problem in the world, as one that can be solved with military intervention. And we use it more than any other nation does. My dad used to say, “If you got a hammer in your hand, you can’t but help seeing everything as a nail.” Such massive investment robs our government and our society of funds for social development, improvement of its physical infrastructure, (roads, railroads, internet waterways, and electrical generation and grid system) and a modern social safety-net.

But whatever the source, efforts to correct and improve our nation are weakened or stymied by a pervasive myth often termed: “American Exceptionalism.” The concept of America as a “special nation” promotes the idea that the USA is the “city on the shining hill”, chosen by God to be an exemplar for others, and exempt from normal historical forces of decline, error, or need for renewal and course-correction to which other nations are subject. We like to think of ourselves as the political model to which all others either wish or (in our mind) should emulate. We are simply "The Best"! If we buy into that concept—our nation can make no mistakes—and thus there is need for corrective action or improvement. Such a concept and its consequences are a prescription for demise and failure. Too often it sounds too much like jingoistic ultranationalism.

Even worse, the myth of “exceptionalism” has fostered an arrogant foreign policy that has led us into disastrous adventures overseas. Recall the policies of a recent US government, which promulgated ideas of “regime change” (to a more compliant government) or “nation building”(into a system more congruent to our own how impossible or unlikely that is)---in independent nations of the Middle East-- all to our financial and political detriment.

The pseudo-religious basis for the concept of a “a shining city on the hill” or a God-ordained political entity, goes counter to most of our basic tenets of freedom, liberty, and separation of Church and State, as established by our founding fathers. This pernicious idea of a God ordained polity had its origin with the Puritans--the zealot Christian sect which Queen Elizabeth I of England wisely hounded out of her country. These radical Christians believed fervently that they had made a covenant with God and that the colonies they established in New England were destined to be a model (the source of the phrase "a shining city on the hill") for the rest of the world to emulate and follow. (The actual history of those colonies are shot through with bigotry, harsh imposition of religious uniformity, and the establishment of a fanatical religious oligarchy, too reminiscent of medieval Europe than of modern America. Though those early colonies are long gone, aspects of their zealotry too often raise their ugly head from deep within the heart-land’s native soils and tend to become manifest politically.

Myths of exceptionalism are not new. The Greeks of Classical times, (perhaps for obvious and good cause) thought of themselves as unique and honored by the Gods and considered Athens to be the zenith of human development. Those who did not speak Greek, and babbled unintelligibly (heard to the Greek-ear as "bar-bar-bar-bar’) were considered to be "barbarians", i.e. they did not speak Greek and thus were excluded as civilized folk. The Romans, during the Republic and on into the Imperial age, held a similar concept of political superiority, and adopted the Greek concept and term "barbarian" to denote those who were non-Roman and thus they considered outside the pale of civilization.

Perhaps such myths help to bind a nation together and were a necessary evil for the survival of its political system. But our circumstances and needs, in an interconnected multicultural world are very different. In modern times such jingoistic concepts do not help to support efforts for national renewal and self-evaluation that can lead to improvement. “Critical thinking,”and self-appraisal is not supported by such a philosophy.

But for those who can engage in critical thought, there is much to consider. Are we really so exceptional? Let us take an incomplete but unbiased look. Are we the nation that others wish to or should emulate? The following are facts about our nation that need an airing into the public for discourse and evaluation.

First let us examine the economy.

In a perceptive and revelatory piece in a January 2011, edition of ‘guardian.co.uk’, entitled: “The Myth of American Exceptionalism” by Prof. Richard D. Wolff (Economics, Univ. Mass., Amherst, ret 2008, presently Visiting Prof., New School Univ. NYC, and author of: “Captialism Hits The Fan,” (2009)) Wolff states. “Until the 1970s, US capitalism shared its spoils with American workers” but since that date, the tables have turned and now business, government and the powers that be have made the American working class pay for its failures.

Wolff states that the concept of American exceptionalism has stemed from US economic prowess. All US citizens (excepting a tiny percentage of Native Americans) are immigrants to these shores. The vast majority of our citizenry are either immigrants themselves or children or grandchildren, or great-grandchildren of immigrants who were attracted here, more often than not, as a direct result of the expanding American economy. My great-grandparents and my maternal grandfather came here from their native lands to a country they saw as a land of opportunity, where anyone who had a good idea, determination, and the ability to work, could find a job, get a foothold, and then start a business and prosper. And my grandpa did. In late 19th century America he found a nation where economic growth encouraged new-comers. He encountered near unlimited opportunity for work and personal betterment. In more recent times, America’s economic miracle arose from factors such as a rising population (growing from immigration and natural increase) which created increased demand for goods and services, which in turn fueled higher levels of real wages and a steady growth of the standard of living for all. Wolff states, “A profitable US capitalism kept running ahead of labor supply. So business kept raising wages to attract waves of immigration and to retain employees, during the 19th century and on into the 1970s.”

Those conditions of population growth and expanding economy tended to continue (with some interruptions by the economic downturns such as the Great Depression and flareups of heated growth such as WW II) into the 20th century. But it reached a watershed in the decade of the 1970s.

In the 1970s the entire business-labor equation altered. Factors that caused this change were both social and technological. One break in technology occurred in the early 1960s. It was the advent of the oral-contraceptive pill. The “pill" was approved by the FDA. Its use spread rapidly among women of childbearing age so much so that by the late 1960s Time Magazine thought it appropriate to feature a picture of “the pill” on its April 1967 front page. Today, twelve million US women use “the pill.” Many have argued that this new technology was a key element in altering women’s role in the economy. It is clear now that the new medical technology extended the years that young women could avoid childbearing and use those years to devote to education and career preparation, or to join the work force prior to having children or even forgoing childbearing entirely. At the present time there are more women undergraduates in US colleges than men. Women could decide when (or if) they wanted to marry, or when they wanted to enter the workforce to pursue a job or a career. The new technology encouraged the civil rights movement known as “women’s liberation” which helped to alter the social and political landscape and further encouraged women to enter the workforce. In 1973, the landmark US Supreme Court case of Roe v Wade held that women had a right to privacy under the due process clause in the 14th Amendment and that right extended to having an abortion. Though that controvercial ruling remains a contentious point in national politics and political debate to this day, its economic consequences, leading to increasing numbers of women in the workforce, are unchallenged.

Other technological advances were being initiated at that time as well. Beginning in the 1960s, experiments first using military computers and later commercial computers as well were wired in tandem to, over long distances were completed successfully. In the early 1970s computer engineers at several northeastern universities (particularly Dartmouth and MIT) began to link their university computers together using existing telephone and telecommunication systems such as telephone lines. The computer network produced was called ARPANET. It was this initial system which later spread to business and industry and was to become the internet we know of today. Just like the new means of travel by rail in the 19th century revolutionized communications the internet had its effects on business. Its use revolutionized many business functions by lowering transaction costs, Soon, with the advent of broadband, wifi, etc. manufacturing companies found it profitable to move much of their production to cheap-labor venues overseas. Off-shoring jobs became a common means of reducing production costs, breaking the backs of labor unions and maximizing profits for many large corporations. With no incentives business kept wages static, reduced benefits but continued to see increased productivity from workers. They had the best possible world..rising productivity, rising profits and stable or decreasing labor costs.

Thus since the 1970s we have seen technological, and social changes revolutionize the relationship between business and labor. US capitalism no longer faced a shortage of labor. These international corporations now can “thumb their noses” at labor. They have kept wages static (relative to inflation) they have reduced benefits. Their policies have tended to shift costs for needed social safety nets to local government and municipalities resulting in local higher taxes. Large corporations have little interest in paying taxes in their “home” nation, or submitting to regulations of a single nation. They as Jeff ……… from Columbia University stated (CNN/GPS August 18, 2011) “they have only one foot in this country and their other some place around the world!”. These capitalist entities now prefer smaller government, and less regulation, and those interests are reflected in the policies of the two political parties that they support financially.

But if the working classes have gotten poorer, the rich have gotten much richer since the 1970s by every measure available. One reason: Because American labor was working “scared” (when each job holder has several other applicants in line for their jog they work harder). In addition, these workers had more and better education, and were supplied with and more and better technology such as computers and computerized processes. Thus, productivity increased but wages remained flat. This scenario produced more profits for company owners and managers, shareholders, and increased profits to professionals such as architects, archaeologists, attorneys, consultants, and others).

Too often perceptions take a long time to catch up with reality. The perceptions of workers remained mired in the 1970s optimism while the reality changed slowly around them. As worker’s benefits and buying power slowly eroded they worked harder, they worked on their few annual holidays (the US workforce has the fewest paid holidays per year than any other industrialized nation (13 days) while nations of Europe range from 45 in France, 42 Germany and to 35 in the UK) and worked for longer hours per day, or had a wife or other family member move into the labor force to help maintain their “middle class” status. When such efforts were maximized they turned to increasing credit card debt, leveraging money from their residence by increasing debt. As Wolff states “By exhausting themselves , stressing family life ….taking on unsustainable amounts of debt, the US working class delayed the end of American exceptionalism –until the global crisis hit in 2007.”
How did that happen?
Between 1970 and 2007 the grand bargain forged between labor and capital in which the former worked to produce US products generated from US businessess in which US capitalists invested in and which made profits which sustained the capitalist class, and which products were consumed by the same labor force---was slowly crumbling. The top echelons of earners were growing richer and richer while lower economic levels were struggling mightily, using increased personal productivity, multiple jobs, longer hours, longer work year, fewer vacations, more members of the family working, more strees, and by leveraging money from their one main source of wealth—their homes. The capitalist class in these times were well heeled. With larger and larger sums of cash on hand they were seeking investments for their funds. Members of government were willing and able to help these rich clients who were supporting their reelection bids with bundles of cash. One major of the cause the several crises (housing bubble, financial crisis and resulting failing financial instituions) which we now call the “global crisis” was the deregulation legislation pushed by Republicans during the Clinton admistration. President Clinton eventually signed the Gramm-Leach—Bliley Act in 1999 a bill that would free banks, insurance companies and financial institutions to consolidate (Nobel Economist Paul Krugman called Senator Phil Gramm, main archtect and sponsor of the act, “the father of the Great Recession”). The Gramm bill overrode much of the safeguards of the early (1930s era) Glass-Stegall Act a bill wisely designed to prevent financial institutions from using bank depositor’s savings to make risky investments. The Gramm bill unraveled that restriction…providing investors with vast quantites of savings to invest in questionable enterprisises. And what were some of these enterprises?

Beginning in the 1960s and culminating in late 1980s US legislators introduced bills which premitted banks to bundle and sell mortgaged backed securities (MBS. These bonds were sold to investors based on the fact that similar to other securities they paid a regular monthly dividend, but outside of normally fluctuating business and stock cycle. Banks were eager to sell mortgages as MBSs and collect the cash face value from this transaction rather than having to wait to collect monthly payments until the mortgage matured. Furthermore, these MBS could be bundled into collateralized mortgage obligations (CMO) in which poor risk mortgages (from less than optimum properties and/or less secure mortgagees) could be incorporated into the bundle, spreading the risk to a large pool of investors over large geographic areas (often world wide). Using these methods, larger and larger numbers of mortgages could be processed from high risk clients creating a voluminous flow of cash with a minimal of risk to individual investors. Some of the mortgages in a bundle would invariably go bad…but the vast majority would continue to pay regularly.

On the other hand, those at the top, with the lowest taxes and the highest incomes by the early years of the 21 century, had accumulated more and more of the wealth of the nation. Unequal wealth distribution was about what it was in 1927-8 just prior to the economic collapse. Presently, the top 1% control 35% of the nation’s net worth leaving the bottom 99% to scramble over the remaining 65% of the nation’s net worth (another view sees the top 20% controll 85% of the nation’s net worth and the bottom 80% control only 15%). (See http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html) The plutocrats continued amass wealth, and used that wealth to defang and undermine government regualtions. Financiers also found novel ways to increase the overstuffed coffers of the wealthy by means of such as novel financial devices as “asset backed securites”, “hedge funds”, “credit default swaps”, and of course the now notorious mortgage backed security.
Banks and financial institutions which formerly were in the simple business of lending money to the local community to help create prosperity for all, found that they could vastly increase profits by bundling residential bank mortgages (knowing that some were going to be of good payers and others would fail to pay). Why should they hold the risk? Why not spread the risk around to reduce its impact on each investor? Sounds reasonable nes pas? So that’s what they all did. They increased their sales of mortgages (with no need to be too careful now to whom they lent money…since the downturn of such “poor borrowers” was going to be spread far and wide). Between the early 90’s and 2007 enormous numbers (some report 7-9 trillions of dollars worth) of these bundled securities were sold to investors as “AAA” stock.
Since the 1970s, most US workers postponed facing up to what capitalism had come to mean for them. They sent more family members to do more hours of paid labour, and they borrowed huge amounts. By exhausting themselves, stressing family life to the breaking point in many households, and by taking on unsustainable levels of debt, the US working class delayed the end of American exceptionalism – until the global crisis hit in 2007. By then, their buying power could no longer grow: rising unemployment kept wages flat, no more hours of work, nor more borrowing, were possible. Reckoning time had arrived. A US capitalism built on expanding mass consumption lost its foundation.
Wolff concludes that after the recent collapse of 2007-8 the rich, using their financial support as leverage, tended to widen the gulf of unequal wealth distribution…“finally burying American exceptionalism..” by through their agents in Washington encouraging President Obama to lavishly support banks, financial institutions, and the stock market, and discouraging the President to resort to massive rehiring and “make-work” programs as did FDR successfully in 1934. In addition, the Republican focus the “budget defict” and the “national debt” and its press for “austerity” has foisted the cost of the “unjustly, imbalanced response to the crisis” onto the shoulders of the very people who were passed over for help when the government resisted raising taxes on those who caused the crisis and profited the most from its effects. The people are doubly burdened with loss of jobs and revenue and loss of public services. Those Republicans who dare to even think of a tax increase (at this time September 2011) favor a “broadened tax base” (meaning increase taxes for the poor and middle class) rather than increased taxes on the very wealthy (their sponsors) who can well afford the increase but whom they are fearful of crossing.

What can these policies bring us? Economic decline and further shrinking of the USA’s minimalist safety net—the most restrictive in the industrialized western world. Reductions of Social Security, or if Medicare survives--higher co-pays are in the offing, as well as probable loss of the minimal improvements in health care-- part of what Republicans love to call “Obamacare”. Couple this with falling wages, disappearing benefits and rising taxes, as well as an increasing decline in our nation’s infrastructure, such as roads, railways and ports, make the picture of our future bleak. And when these devisive policies which separate us into a nation of “have and have nots” as they eventually will and “bite” into the very lives of our poor, workingclass and burgeoning unemployed, we will all—rich and poor alike---experience increased crime, hooliganism, and social unrest.

Get the picture?

See: Shelby Steele, Opinion, WSJ, September 1, 2011

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904787404576532623176115558.html

How do we stack up as an exceptional nation?

How does our American nation rank in Scientific thinking, Health Care, Longevity, Education, Upward Mobility, Public Transportation, Broadband Access, Crime, Science, Incarceration, Quality of Life? To be “exceptional” should not our nation be on top in these categories and others.

Acceptance of Evolution:
The US ranks 33rd after most of the industrialized world and Asia and just above Turkey (34th) in its acceptance of the modern concept of evolution. http://rankingamerica.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/the-us-ranks-33rd-in-acceptance-of-evolution/

Health Care System:
In a Wall Street Journal article (“Ill Conceived Ranking Makes for Unhealthy Debate”, October 21, 2009) decrying the use of a World Health Organization ranking which placed the US health care system in an embarrassing 37th place, the author, Carl Bialik, cries “foul” suggesting that the data is old, the figures were soft estimates, and the ranking system which used as a factor the total amount of expenditure each country makes in pursuit of their health-care goals (note that in that measure the US is # 1) tends to heavily distort the rankings. To prove his point, Mr Bialik provides a graph of these data in which that factor is discounted. In that revised (Balick-WSJ) ranking the US health care system comes up to (15) fifteenth! It is below such nations as Japan (1), Netherlands (3), France(5), Canada(6), UK (8), and Italy(10). Thus we need not depend on the non-biased WHO to establish how well or poorly we are performing in this area. Even in the pro-business WSJ rankings the US health-care system does not rate! That the nation which is without question the greatest industrial power in the world and which outspends all the others in health care winds up ranking in 15th place is not something we should be proud of.

It is noteworthy that we do rank very high in one related category. The US ranks near the very top (#2) in out of pocket expenses for health care services.

What about life expectancy?
In regard to life expectancy of our citizens we are not exceptional either. We rank 24th in average life expectancy (so called HALE values). These simple figures are difficult to argue with. An average person in Japan, Australia, France, Sweden, Spain, Italy Greece , Switzerland, Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Canada, Netherlands, UK, Norway Belgium, Austria, Luxembourg, Iceland, Finland, Malta, Germany, and tiny, militarily threatened Israel, all live longer than we do in the US where the average life expectancy is 70.0 years. Why should the most powerful nation in the world, a nation with the largest economy, and the source of so many medical innovations rank so low? Why are we not at the top--near France and Switzerland at least? Perhaps the reason is that many of these longer-lived nations have better health care systems and one might attribute such factors as quality of health care, and out of pocket expenses as a controlling factor for this poor showing. Note that these figures are derived from the WHO for the year 1999 to 2000. But since that time, more recent figures suggest we have slipped a little lower down on the scale.

What about education?
USA Today, December 7, 2010 reports :
In education as in health, the US is trailing other nations in performance and outcome -- yet we outspend them mightily. While we spend more per student than most other nations in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) (except for rich and tiny which Luxembourg spends a bit more) our results are only “average”. PISA’s high-scorers include South Korea, Finland, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai in China, and Canada. Our system for schools is based on local property taxes means that more affluent communities can spend more and poorer communities less. The most productive and successful nations in this area are able to target spending on the most challenged students and schools. We do not do this. “United States students are continuing to trail behind their peers in a pack of higher performing nations, according to results from a key international assessment. Scores from the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment to be released Tuesday show 15-year-old students in the U.S. performing about average in reading and science, and below average in math. Out of 34 countries, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math. Those scores are all higher than those from 2003 and 2006, but far behind the highest scoring countries, including South Korea, Finland and Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai in China and Canada.”

But where we are undisputed leaders is in military expenditures. Today we spend more on our military than all the other nations in the world. Do you get that? Pile up the defense expenditures of all the nations in one column, China is the largest at about 60 billion dollars (1/10 of US spending), France, UK, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Saudia Arabia, etc., etc. add all the nations on top. The total comes to a very big number—about 680-690 billion dollars world-wide. Yes, we all spend too much to kill each other. But if we were to align that column with another, a column that represents USA military expenditures, the second column would equal the first. Yes, the two columns would be of equal height since we all by our selves spend just a bit more than all the other nations combined. China spends only one-tenth of what we spend and Russia, spends a fraction of what China spends. Iran—our worst enemy—its expenditures are miniscule in comparison to ours.

One question to ask here is why? Who are we gearing up to fight? We now spend ten times more than China, our only putative competitor. Russia spends less than China and is anyway our ally. Why do we spend so much? Ask you congressman to explain that. Since almost every time the Pentagon asks for money they agree to it plus an excess. Why do we need such extravagance? It is not “defence”. Think about it.

Today July 9, 2011, our local newspaper ran a piece entitled: “Military budget Grows” (Newsday 7-09-11) by Donna Cassata, in which the author states that “Money for the Pentagon and the nation’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is proving largely immune to budget cutting that’s slamming other government agencies…” The author reports that on a 336-87 vote Friday, the Republican controlled House supported a nearly 650 billion military spending bill that boosts the Defense Department budget by 17 billion dollars. The bipartisan vote came amid demands by the Republicans to slash spending in an attempt to cut the deficit. After the vote, Rep Barney Frank (D Mass) scoffed at the suggestion that “everything is on the table” in the budget negotiations between the White House and congressional leaders. This vote proves that the “military budget is not on the table” said Frank, “but the military is there at the table---eating everybody else’s lunch.’

What about our political system? We are a Republic governed by an indirectly elected president (remember the college of electors), a directly elected House of Representatives and a very much less representative—Senate. We also have a much-touted system of “checks and balances”. In the last several years, gridlock in Congress has illustrated the weaknesses of our system.

In modern times Presidents have tend to increase their power. Some have even supported their expansion of power using the questionable interpretations of historic documents, coining the term “unitary presidentialism.” Some have taken to using “signing statements” which restrict or modify the way they will implement legislation duly passed by the House and Senate.

During the recent downgrade of our credit system from AAA to AA+ , Fareed Zakaria, of Time Magazine has noted a revealing face: that the only states with AAA ratings are those with parliamentary systems. Those with presidential systems of government such as ours, do not have AAA ratings. (And now we don’t have it either). Zakaria questioned why that was the case. Were presidential systems less stable?

Parlimentary vs Presidential Systems
Most modern democratic nations in the western world have parliamentary systems of government. Germany, France, UK, Spain, Italy, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Israel, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Portugal, Greece, etc. etc. are all parliamentary systems Some like the UK, Sweden, Belgium, Spain, and others have titular monarchies. In those latter systems a monarch sits as a national figure-head, but all political power resides in the parliament and head of state, and the monarch in these systems have little or no political power. In parliamentary systems the people directly elect representatives to the parliament within a one-person-one-vote system. When the parliament meets these elected members caucus to vote for a leader, generally called the “prime minister” (PM) (or sometimes “the president”) who generally represents the majority party elected at that time. Thus the people’s voices were heard. The PM presides over the government as long as he or she can maintain a majority in parliament. The PM is both the head of state, and the head of a majority in parliament, as well as the leader of his or her party. Political scientists and theorists have suggested that in such system there is little conflict between the head of state (PM) and the parliament or representative body, since the former is actually chosen by the latter and derives its legitimacy from the latter.

On the other hand, in our presidential system, the President and the Congress are often in conflict, since they each can claim a mandate from the people. At the present time, President Obama, a Democrat who was elected in 2008, serves with a House of Representatives (elected in 2010) and now dominated by Republicans. In addition, the sharply divided Senate (some of whom were elected in 2010) is sharply divided with nearly half the seats Republican and half Democrat. The Democrats have held onto a single a one-vote majority in the last election. On top of that, since the Senate has generated its own rules of order (not indicated in the Constitution) and now insists on a sixty-vote majority for nearly all significant legislation (50% plus one was not good enough for them), in the present Senate, it is nearly impossible for the President’s party to muster the necessary (60) votes to pass significant legislation. (Keep in mind, this is just another way the Senate acts to insulate itself from the wishes of the citizens who elected them). Besides the fact that there is no one-person-one-vote rule to elect Senators, since some Senators in small states represent only thirty or forty thousand citizens, while a Senator in Texas, New York or California will represent perhaps ten times that many. For example, the two Senators from California represent 36 million citizens, or each Senator represents 18 million citizens, while the two Senators from Vermont (600,000 population) represent only 300,000 each. A Senate vote in vote California represent sixty times the number of people represented in the Vermont Senator’s vote. But both the California and Vermont Senators can each cast one vote in the Senate for or against legislation. These votes are not representative of the wishes of the total citizenry of the USA in any democratic way. Such a system in the upper house tends to award greater political power in the Senate to low density, under-populated states. Combined with the present Senate supermajority rules, and its inherent unrepresentative election system, a small, well-funded minority can control major legislation for the entire 325 million US citizens. That is not how a democracy is supposed to work. We expect that in a democracy…the majority should rule! But not in the exceptional USA. What does this do? These policies weaken our democracy. They discourage and dilute political activism, causing citizenry to feel that they have little or no impact in their once every four year vote for a president. Such behavior permits and encourages political power to move toward the elites who can pay to get the attention of Senators and Congress members.

To be continued

But do you get the picture?

WHAT THE REPUBLICANS STAND FOR TODAY

2011-09-20T09:38:00.000-07:00

Last week I cringed as I watched the early Republican debates on TV. What has happened to the Grand Old Party, the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Nixon and yes even Reagan? The shades of those earlier GOP presidents must be sitting up in their tombs, with quizzical expressions on their faces, mumbling “Did I hear that right?”. There is no line, ever so contorted, which seems able to connect the policies of these past leaders to this new crop of hopefuls.

Here’s what I gather from listening to these men (and one woman) who represent modern-day Republicanism.

Today Republicans have no use at all for government. They have taken Reagan’s plea for smaller government to a ”reductio ad absurdum” conclusion.

They would either throttle Ben Bernanke, (Chairman of the Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System) or threaten him as “treasonous”. The FED is supposed to be a body which is indepenedent of government intervention, tasked with promoting the objectives of maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates. Bernanke’s past use of “quantitative easing” (QE) is one way of stimulating the economy by increasing money in the system. In effect, decreasing the value of the dollar (inflation) so as to undermine the great overhang of debt that is stifling public demand and spending. Of course, the “rentier” class of oligarchs who favor and support the Republicans are not in favor of even minor increases in inflation, since that would mean that they are paid back in dollars which have a slightly lower value than what they had invested. So all the Republican candidates would have the FED focus its policies only on what favors the rich. They want Bernanke to just keep inflation low and ignore the task of promoting maximum employment. To sustain that goal, they have not shirked from actual threats against the Chairman, such Rick Perry's comment about “getting ugly” with Bernanke were he to increase inflation.

They are opposed to almost all government spending and all taxation--for the rich. They would “broaden and flatten the tax base” meaning that the wealthy (so called “job generators”) would continue to have low taxes and those in the bottom half of income distribution would pay more in taxes. But there is no evidence at all that over the last decades, when wealth has been concentrated in the hands of the wealthy, that the rich have used those resources to generate jobs. Jobs have decreased steadily for the middle and working classes over those years, while money has concentrated steadily in the coffers of the wealthy. The Republicans of today steadfastly ignore the fact that wealth in this country has been more and more concentrated in the upper levels of income classes, so that today the top 20% of income earners control 80% of the nation’s wealth, leaving the lower 80% of the population to squabble over the remaining 20%. (In another view, the top 1% control 40% of the nation’s wealth--leaving the lower 99% only 60% of the “pie”.) The Republicans continue to repeat the inaccurate claim that “50% of the population pay no taxes at all”. This is a distortion and a lie. Those at the bottom who pay little or no income taxes are the working poor, (those below the poverty level), the indigent, very poor, or disabled. Can you get blood from a stone? However, all these low tax payers all pay state and local taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, et cetera. These flat rate taxes are less just since they cut more deeply into the pocketbooks of the poor than of the wealthy. In regard to the working and middle class tax payers they pay a greater proportion of their income on taxes than the wealthy classes (who are most often taxed at the 15% capital-gains rate), while salaried workers, pay social security, payroll taxes and are hit with income taxes at a rate of 30-35%. Thus the working and middle classes are the ones who pay the most--yet they are the ones who stupidly support the Republican candidates the most avidly. Are they stupid or simply less informed?

Today's Republicans are all anti-environment, favoring quick profits for (their business clients) the exploiters of our water, air, forests, wildlife and mineral resources over the wise, clean, and long-term, multi-generational use of these resources. They would all hobble our government environment-protection agencies and pack them with business advocates so to undermine their regulatory function as watchmen over these resources. I need not state here—but I can not contain the urge—that such behavior in the former G.W Bush administration (but which continued into the Obama administration) led to the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

This crop of Republicans are all anti-science. They are unwilling or unable to distinguish between political and religious dogma and scientific fact. They would take us back in time and logical processes to before Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum in 1620 where Bacon outlines the syllogism of scientific reasoning, and before Galileo who in 1632 questioned the authority of Aristotle and the Church. Their thinking is at a pre-Gallileo “pseudo science” level where religious dogma controlled what a scientist could think, rather than what logic dictated.

New Republicans are all opposed to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security and would either shrink these popular programs to a near-ineffectual status, or do away with them all-together. They love to attack Social Security (some call it a "Ponzi scheme") which is a government run, pay-as-you-go-insurance system. It is not in trouble. I recall well all that big chunk of money withdrawn from my meager monthly checks. Amounts that I could have used to better feed and house my family. Each social security recipient paid for what he or she gets. The only reforms which are needed (and not until 2030s) are minor adjustments to future payments and withdrawls. Just leave SS alone. It works.

What all the current crop of Republicans should be looking at and which they all ignore is military spending, which has gone through the roof. Military spending eats up more than one third of the federal budget. What do we get for it? We have no existential threats out there. The Russians and Chinese are our friends now. The few hundred al Qaieda running around in Afghanistan and the borderlands of Pakistan in sandals and rags on their heads are not an existential threat to our nation, and their threat certainly does not justify an expenditure over more than $600 billion dollars annually in "defense spending". Why do we spend more on our military than all the other nations in the world combined? To believe that it is for defense is silly. Why do we need a $400 billion dollar compound the size of the Vatican in Iraq? Or the vast military and naval base we have made out of the nation of Japan? Why is Germany such a huge hole in the ground for our military dollars? Ask that same question for nearly a thousand US military intallations around the world. There are no justifiable reasons for such expenditures when we are laying off teachers, librarians, firemen and policemen here at home and when more than 16 million of our citizens are either under-employed or idle. But no Republicans care. They would like to undermine the middle class and pick their pockets for taxes before they would even talk about military spending.

They are all in favor of “old-time Christian values” as well as “freedom” and “personal responsibility” and yet forget the explicit commands of the Good Book (to which they all seem to give excessive fealty) to give succor to your neighbor, as they vote to remove or defund government programs to aid people who have for some reason or other, bad luck, accident or poor decisions find themselves poor, sick, disabled or destitute.

They are all for "privacy" but not in the bedroom where they are concerned what goes on in there.

They are pro-life to a man (and woman) for the unborn. And they ignore the right of women to determine their own reporductive future. Yet they are pro-death and perfectly happy to kill off adults (the elderly and children too) particularly individuals of other cultural and religious backgrounds, often these are muslims and of a deeper-brown skin-shade who succumb to aerial bombs, drone strikes, or other means, if these brown people have the audacity to oppose US interventionism, expansionism, exploitation and occupation of their lands. They favor taking the lives of adults incarcerated for violent crimes by legal executions too, either by electrocution or lethal injection.

JAPAN MANAGES SUMMER HEAT WITHOUT NUKES

2011-09-16T12:16:00.000-07:00

WITH HALF OF ITS NUKES IDLE JAPAN MANAGES WELL WITH CONSERVATION ALONE

Over the last few months, since the disastrous March 11 earthquake and tsunami, Japan's shattered Fukushima Diichi nuclear plant continues to emit radioactive gases and particulate matter which spreads out contaminating a fifty kilometer wide zone. In the rest of the nation more than 30 of Japan's 54 other nuclear plants, (many of them aging GE models similar to those we have here in the US), lay idle in cold-shutdown, while their siting-suitability and safety are reevaluated. This long and slow process has forced Japan into an unwanted, unplanned nationwide summer conservation program. The good news is that the nation's efforts have been highly successful.

I hear through my Nipponese friends, (as well as the Sept 17, 2011 "Economist", iphone editors highlights) that one striking difference you may observe were you to have visited corporate Japan this summer is that everyone was going about tieless and in shirtsleeves rather than in the traditional business suit. The reason? No air conditioning.

It is a tribute to the Japanese that they have managed to continue their personal lives, busineses and vital activites with most of their nuclear plants shuttered and idle. It is remarkable that Japan, a modern, top-tier industrialized nation, has come through the hot summer, when demand is highest on its nuclear-power-driven electrical generation system, unscathed, with its people working, its factories operating, and its infrastructure and society intact . It is a tribute to the Japanese national character which prizes social cohesion, cooperation, and hard work, but it is also encouraging that a modern industrialized nation can give up 55% of its electrical power generation and still manage to avoid dreaded brownouts and blackout--over a hot summer. How?

Japan put into place a wide-ranging set of simple conservation measures, such as having some employees limit daily travel to work from home, by closing certain factories in the day and operating them at night when electrical demand is low, limiting use of air conditoning and excess lighting, and by broadcasting the nation's peak electrical demand figures over over TV and radio stations to encourage citizen cooperation and compliance. An enormous amount of electricity goes to waste in our modern usage. Contrary to what the nay-sayers claim, simple conservation measures can be significant. Conservation can and should be seen as another energy resource--that part of what we produce, but which is generally wasted--which, as the Japanese experiment this summer seems to prove--is a significant fraction of the whole. Other industrialized nations can use less electricity (much less) and continue to thrive.

Do the Japanese want to live under strict conservation all the time? It depends on where you are coming from and what choices you have. But without significant fossil fuel resources Japan must turn to its existing efficient use of its wind, tidal, hydropower resources--as well as conservation. There are few places in Japan---which is geologically, essentially a series of merged volcanic cones--where nukes can be safely sited. But as Father Michael often encouraged us: "make a stepping stone out of every stumbling block". For the Japanese that would be to make use of the great pool of subterranean heat which causes its earthquakes and tsunamis and which lies under its surface. Geothermal energy can be used either to directly heat homes and factories, or to generate electricity. After all that is what is accomplished in a nuclear plant-- water is heated by nuclear fission to make steam to drive generators--. The irony is that directly under the Fukishima Diichi plant there is an enormous amount of free, safe, and unlimited heat to drive all of Japan's electric generation needs.

What is your preference? Continual anxiety, uncertainty and business disruption and an existential threat by the danger of exposure to nuclear melt-down and radiation poisoning, or tapping into geothermal heat?

In the interim, as geothermal, wind, tidal and hydropower are developed...Japan will probably continue to have to cope as they have this summer with conservation---and the electricity generated from those nuclear plants which are considered safe--for now.

The good news is that there are good options for Japan.

Get the picture?

GLASS STEAGALL ACT REINTRODUCED---IN BRITAIN!

2011-09-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

THE UK RETURNS TO A “GLASS-STEAGALL-LIKE ACT” TO PROTECT THEIR BANKS--THE USA DOES NOTHING.

One major cause of the Great Recession of 2007-8 was the deregulation of banks, successfully pushed by Republicans during the Clinton administration. A Republican mantra since before the Goldwater nomination in the 1960s has always been "too big government" and "too much regulation". They couldn't get their wish to gut federal banking regualtions with wiser, earlier Presidents from both parties. But it was wily, (and politically comprimised) President Clinton who eventually signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, a bill that freed investment commercial banks and financial institutions (which issued and sold securities) to own and interact with savings banks (which accepted citizen deposits). The resulting free-for all in our banking and financial sector is often sited as a prime cause of the Great Recession of 2007. (In fact, Nobel Economist Paul Krugman called Senator Phil Gramm, main architect and sponsor of the act, “the father of the Great Recession”).

The Gramm bill overrode most of the safeguards of the 1934 Glass-Steagall Act, a bill written just after the bank failures of the Great Depression to prevent the recurrence of collusion and interaction of high risk, unregulated, financial institutions with retail and savings banks. It was that legislation which over the intervening decades had prevented risk-prone financial institutions from using bank depositor’s savings to make high risk investments. The Gramm bill unraveled those restrictions…providing banks and investors access to vast quantities of savings money to invest in questionable securities and enterprises. There is little doubt that the free-wheeling, no-holds barred, casino-like and risky behavior unleashed by US bankers and their financial collaborators fed the housing bubble and ushered in a near-decade long period of greed and excess which most economists concede was a major factor contributing to the collapse of 2007-8.

But not only did we stupidly let Senator Gramm undermine our banking system's stability, but after the collapse, we added insult to injury by bailing-out those corporations responsible (or irresponsible) for the disaster! Yes, the big banks, financial institutions, and investment houses that generated the problem were awarded bail-out funds to the tune of more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars. Money which came from the pockets of the middle-class taxpayers of this nation--the very ones who have taken the brunt of the economic downturn.

As President Bush (and later President Obama) handed over that money, they foolishly demanded no quid pro quo in return. At that low point, a wise government should have required the system to accede to a reinstatement of those sensible regulations of the 1933 Act. But we did nothing, and since then there has been no appetite for re-regulation of our banking system from either Republicans or Democrats. We continue to remain in dire financial jeopardy of a similar event reoccurring. Furthermore, the lack of confidence in our banking system may even be a contributory factor in our stuttering recovery.

However, even if we didn't learn from our mistakes, others have. Today I read in the UK “Telegraph” (September 15, 2011) that Sir John Vickers (economist at All Souls College, Oxford, and Chair of the UK's Independent Commission on Banking (ICB) has released that august group's report on a recent investigation into British banking. “Sir John Vicker's ICB published its final report on Monday, recommending that banks should protect their retail operations from riskier investment banking units and raise capital levels to protect taxpayers from future crises.”

The ICB has concluded that they need more protection from the possible collusion of banks and financial institutions and have published a report that in effect reproduces a form of the US 1933 Glass Steagall Act for the British banking system. Aware that in the future, “high street” savings and retail banks (read “Main Street banks”) and the citizen’s savings upon which the local economy is based, must be protected from risky investments, the ICB wisely recommended "ringfencing" the retail banks.

Some of the prime provisions of the ICB report: The need is immediate and widespread with the new regulations to take effect as soon as 2019. Retail banks should be “ringfenced” to be isolated and protected from interaction with financial institutions. Services such as stock trading, market activities and especially use or sale of derivatives are excluded from the retail banks. One third of banks would be placed within the ringfence. Ringfenced banks must have separate boards with independent directors. Ringfenced banks shall have higher equity capital requirements.

These ICB proposals are very sound ones. It is a sad commentary that the USA pioneered this very idea nearly eighty years ago, and it operated successfully for more sixty years (with only minor revisions) but succumbed to greed, hubris, bad politics and simple stupidity in 1999 only eight years before it was really needed. Like Germany, Australia, and several other nations which had strong banking regulations, were it not for Senator Gramm and his ilk we too might have missed the "Great Recession bullet".

I recommend that we either dig up the old Glass Stegall Act and reintroduce that legislation, or follow the British lead on "ringfencing" our banks. We will all feel a lot more confident about our savings, our future and our children's futures. That confidence may help buoy this faltering economy as well.

Get the picture?

PAUL KRUGMAN SAID IT, WE ARE ALL THINKING IT

2011-09-12T10:29:00.000-07:00

I reprint Paul Krugman's Blog from the 9-11-11 NYT below.

September 11, 2011, 8:41 am
The Years of Shame

Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.

.

WHY WE ARE IN AFGHANISTAN AND WON'T LEAVE

2011-07-13T08:18:00.001-07:00

July 13, 2011
I can’t seem to make sense of our policy in Afghanistan. Each month we read reports of the loss of our soldiers to treacherous IEDs. The men who do survive such attacks may come home as broken shells of their former selves, often with need for long-term medical care. But that is only one part (a hear-rending one) of the tragedy. The cost of fielding troops in that distant mountainous land is staggering--one million dollars per trooper. With our present (post-Obama) troop surge- we spend over 10 billion dollars a month or 120 billion dollars annually in far off Afghanistan. But the real costs are much greater. A recent, detailed study by the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University revealed that the war on terror (of which the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are part) has cost the US economy so far about 4 trillion dollars. Another trillion dollars is estimated for the long-term interest payments on the loans we took out to finance the wars. Oh yes, these “Bush” wars were “on the cuff” affairs. And by the way, while we were borrowing for these wars our leadership in the Bush White House also decided to cut taxes on the wealthy. Those polices, borrowing for the war on terror and cutting taxes at the same time, were the sinister plans of the Republicans to drive the Democrats against a rock and hard place and try to undo the 80 years of FDR progressive domestic spending that reactionary Republicans so loathed.

But back to our reasons for being in Afghanistan. Why are we there? President Obama’s stated reason is to neutralize al-Qaeda—an alleged threat to our security. But since it is well established (CIA and Pentagon reports) that there are perhaps one-hundred (100) al-Qaeda operatives in that nation. One finds that reason incredulous. Or one must conclude that he al-Qaeda (and the Pashtun Afghans who associate with them) must be supermen—if indeed they can be worth the cost of 1.2 billion dollars each to take down. Think of it. One-hundred-twenty thousand (120,000) modern American troops armed to the teeth, with the latest technical devices for dealing death and destruction chasing one-hundred towel-headed men in rags and sandals armed with home-made A-K47 rip-offs and a belt of cartridges. If the al-Qaeda and Taliban had some expertise in movie making they could produce some block-buster comedies out of that scenario. Sadly, it is not a comedy.

Does our government really expect our US citizenry to believe such nonsense? Apparently they do. But by making use the old rule of “follow the money” may help clarify the situation.

By the way: These annual costs for the Afghanistan war should be viewed in context. This fiscal year (14 trillion dollar national debt, a 1.4 trillion dollar deficit) the President has proposed a nearly 4 trillion dollar budget, but tax receipts are expected to be only less than 3 trillion dollars (for a cause of this short-fall think back to the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy of 2001 and 2003). To quiet his detractors Obama has proposed spending-cuts in many entitlement programs (health, education, etc) but has not dared cut the military and Pentagon budgets. They all got a 1.6% raise and there were no cuts. Furthermore, the promised reduction of troops in Afghanistan has been only a nominal drawdown-- some ten thousand are expected to depart but these are mostly support and training men and women. Thus in a situation where our revenues only cover 75% of our expeditiures and we are now spending about a third more than what we take in. Beside the horrible waste of life on both sides, we must ask ourselves, can we afford to blow away 120 billion dollars a year? I think not.

But back to Afghanistan and our costs there. When we ask, “who is profiting from this spending?” We find the bloated Pentagon (the real largest cost element of our annual Federal budget), and the military industrial companies with which the Pentagon has such a cozy relationship. I believe it was President Eisenhower who first used the term "military-industrial complex" and fingered it as a problem for our democracy. Today, the MIC are even bigger and more powerful. They are the US companies who make huge profits out of war-spending (we euphemistically call them “defense contractors”) and those in the banking and financial sector that finance and invest in these companies with close ties to the military, and the facilitator members of Congress and the Senate (mostly Republicans--though the Democrats are in there too).

Pepe Escobar the roving correspondent for the Asia Times has a theory. (Contact: pepeasia@yahoo.com ) He states “The notion that the US government would spend $10 billion a month just to chase a few "al-Qaeda types" in the Hindu Kush is nonsense. This is a war between a superpower and a fierce, nationalist, predominantly Pashtun movement - of which the Taliban are a major strand; regardless of their medieval ways, they are fighting a foreign occupation and doing what they can to undermine a puppet regime (Hamid Karzai's).”

Thus Washington is fighting a Pashtun nationalist insurgency. But why? According to Escobar, Afghanistan must be “neutralized” i.e. the Pashtun tribal elements must be either bribed, exterminated or beaten into submission so that we can keep our bases in an area we deem essential for our plan of world domination of natural resources. Yes! The Pentagon’s plan called “Full Spectrum Dominance” is designed to encircle our competitors in the east:Russia and China…and prevent them from getting resources that we and our client-states may want or need. That plan has of course led to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan-borderlands and now in Libya and who knows where else?”

According to Escobar, that is only the strategic reason. There is tactical and proximate reason as well. This is what Escobar calls “Pipelinestan”. This reason for war in Afghanistan is heard very little of in the timid and controlled US and Murdock press. And when it is discussed, it is described as the west’s attempts at “democratizing” the east. According to Escobar Pipelinestan is his term for the Trans-Afghan Pipeline, a gas line proposed early in the Clinton Administration and which is still on the “planning table” books. The gas line would connect Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan and would permit a flow of natural gas from landlocked and isolated Central Asia to global markets in the west, bypassing both Russia and Iran and siphoning off gas reserves from areas which China might have considered in its own sphere of influence.

Escobar states: “Washington has badly wanted TAP since the mid-1990s, when the Clinton administration was negotiating with the Taliban; the talks broke down because of transit fees, even before 9/11, when the Bush administration decided to change the rhetoric (an offer) from "a carpet of gold" to "a carpet of bombs".”

But to accomplish “Pipelinestan” the US needs a totally pacified Afghanistan and the acquiescence of a Pakistan which must give up using Afghanistan as a vassal state in its confrontation with India. Escobar sees the US and Pakistan’s relationship as two nations both bent on nullifying Pashtun nationalism. This correspondence of goals may explain why the Pakistani Army and the Pentagon enjoy such a close working relationship. (Which is only now showing some signs of strain and diversion after the US’s killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan.) Both Washington and Pakistan see Pashtun nationalism as a thorn in their sides.

The way Escobar sees it: “The 2,500-kilometer-long, porous, disputed border with Afghanistan is at the core of Pakistan's interference in its neighbour's affairs.

Washington is getting desperate because it knows the Pakistani military will always support the Taliban as much as they support other hardcore Islamist groups fighting India. Washington also knows Pakistan's Afghan policy implies containing India's influence in Afghanistan at all costs.

Just ask General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan's army chief - and a Pentagon darling to boot; he always says his army is India-centric, and, therefore, entitled to "strategic depth" in Afghanistan.

It's mind-boggling that 10 years and $5.4 trillion dollars later, the situation is exactly the same. Washington still badly wants "its" pipeline - which will in fact be a winning game mostly for commodity traders, global finance majors and Western energy giants.

From the standpoint of these elites, the ideal endgame scenario is global" (that the US will continue to be) "Robocop NATO - helped by hundreds of thousands of mercenaries - "protecting" TAP (or TAPI) while taking a 24/7 peek on what's going on in neighbours Russia and China.”

Escobar adds: “Sharp wits in India have described Washington's tortuous moves in Afghanistan as "surge, bribe and run". But Escobar redefines it as rather "surge, bribe and stay". He adds that "This whole saga might have been accomplished without a superpower bankrupting itself, and without immense, atrocious, sustained loss of life, but hey - nobody's perfect.”

On another front: Iraq where we see a very similar endgame playing out. The last news reports I read seem to suggest that the Iraq troop pull-out, scheduled for the end of this year, forged in a formal agreement by the Bush presidency, is now considered to be on shaky ground under Obama(the "peace president" who was elected on his stated objection of initiating the Iraq fiasco). It seems that the military types close to the Obamians in Washington are angling for some way to keep their massive bases and a sizable troop deployment there permanently! The number they bandy about seems to be about 10,000 battle ready troops. Their stay would be long term. PS 10,000 times a million dollars/troop/year = ten thousand million or ten billion annually! Ten billion dollars that will come out of our tax payer’s pockets, and will not be available for our schools, our infrastructure, our broadband, our transit, our nation’s health, or the development of energy industries for the 21st century.

If Washington’s real goal is a pacified Afghanistan for the benefit of the oil and gas cartels and for a strategy of global domination…..that should have been brought into the open and debated. It never was. This is supposed to be a DEMOCRACY. The people should have a say in major decisions of war and peace. But what appears to be the case now is that our government has been usurped by the powerful corporations who simply make up the story they want. It seems they have no interest in bettering our nation but want only to use this geographic location as a base of supply, a good place for corporate headquarters, as a source of cheap manpower, and a staging ground for their business activities, and those of the world’s other giant corporations, its global media, and elite clients---and perhaps for its plan of world domination. But as citizens of such a nation we do not get the benefits which accure to their success, such as decent health care, a working and up-to-date infrastructure, clean water and safe food, education and others). Do we want that kind of nation? Let’s ask ourselves, “What’s in it for us?”

Get the picture?

US GOV CUTS SOCIAL SERVICES AT HOME AND SPENDS 3 BILLION A WEEK IN AFGHANISTAN

2011-06-17T13:01:00.000-07:00

WHAT MAKES US DO IT?

Why do we continue to fight wars? Even when there is no reason, no threat, no purpose? Even when we can not afford them anymore? What makes our government spend three billion dollars every week in Afghanistan and Iraq? Why do we spend on guns and bullets when we are closing schools and libraries here at home and where the "cut the deficit" hawks are trimming away at the minimalist social saftey-net we have here in the USA? And as they argue in Washington over the deficit and what social service to cut next, we continue to be faced with the horror of the dead and mutilated which come home either in body bags, or as terribly hurt and deformed young men and women. What makes us do it?

When I would voice questions of this sort in the past, they were often addressed to my good old friend, Professor Mort Strassberg, who sat across from me in our office, his grey head just barely visible over a pile of dusty geology books, mineral samples, and a pile of blue-test-booklets waiting to be marked. My former Department Head, and respected colleague at Suffolk College, would often respond with his favorite answer, "Bob just follow the money. Some big shot, some elite, an oligarch is making good dough on the war. He has plenty of money and him and his big company have a host of "rabbis" in the Senate and Halls of Congress. The big shots get what they want from this government and us, the 'schlemiels', we pay for it in taxes and blood."

So now that old Mort is no longer here, and I can't muse with him about such things anymore, I often think of him and what his response would be.

I imagine his progressive spirit(he was not afraid to call himself a "liberal" ), wafting through his old haunts, the geology prep room, the mineral lab, and the physical science racks in the depths of the college-library basement, and possibly near that tree we planted in his name (a healthy sycamore, now a hefty six or eight inches across) uneasy with what is going on today in Washington. Mort abruptly left the political scene sometime in the George H. W. Bush era, (an administration which irked him greatly) and since then, political matters have deteriorated drastically moving rapidly alon a steep, right-hand slope.

Mort was a true progressive of the George McGovern era. I have to admit, at the time his brand was too strong for me. Perhaps I was too young or naive and it was early in my political development. Then I was a non-politcal scientist. My head was deep in sediment, both figuratively and literally. But time to read and study, and a political awakening occasioned by the GW Bush presidency changed my thinking drastically. Perhaps I can not quite take up Mort's mantle, but a bit of that cloth covers my shoulders now too. I think he would be happy to know that..in some way he did have an influence on my "erroneous" thinking. There would have been less hot air and lots more agreement over that pile of books and papers on our desks these days.

So asking that question again, why do we persist on fighting when it makes no security, political or monetary sense? Mort would have been sure to have underscored that it is certainly not to further democracy, or improve the lives of the poor. But mostly for the warmonger's profit, the general's pride, and the politicians glory. Those reasons were considered immoral ones by Mort, and today I must agree with him. I have had some experience with wars myself. I lived through World War II, the Korean "Conflict", the Vietnam War (I was fortunate to serve two years as a student ROTC cadet during that era), countless Reagan-Bush military actions around the hemisphere, in Lebanon the Middle East, Africa, and around the world, and more recently Geroge Bush's Deceit (Iraq War), Afghanistan War, the secret wars in Yemen, Ethiopia, and Pakistan, and now most recently Obama's illegal war in Libya (where he tries to suggest is not a 'hostility'. Where will it end?

Not having my old friend to puzzle over these matters with, I often resort to a variety of publications to seek answers to my queries. Today, I sought solace with (The Guardian) which ran this piece: Eisenhower's Worst Fears Came True by Simon Jenkins ( June 16, 2011) I excerpt part of it here. See below for the full site.

"It is not democracy that keeps western nations at war, but armies and the interests now massed behind them. The greatest speech about modern defence was made in 1961 by the US president Eisenhower. He was no leftwinger, but a former general and conservative Republican. Looking back over his time in office, his farewell message to America was a simple warning against the "disastrous rise of misplaced power" of a military-industrial complex with "unwarranted influence on government". A burgeoning defence establishment, backed by large corporate interests, would one day employ so many people as to corrupt the political system. (His original draft even referred to a "military-industrial-congressional complex".) This lobby, said Eisenhower, could become so huge as to "endanger our liberties and democratic processes".

I wonder what Eisenhower would make of today's US, with a military grown from 3.5 million people to 5 million. The western nations face less of a threat to their integrity and security than ever in history, yet their defence industries cry for ever more money and ever more things to do. The cold war strategist, George Kennan, wrote prophetically: "Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented."

The devil makes work for idle hands, especially if they are well financed. Britain's former special envoy to Kabul, Sherard Cowper-Coles, echoed Kennan last week in claiming that the army's keenness to fight in Helmand was self-interested. "It's use them or lose them, Sherard," he was told by the then chief of the general staff, Sir Richard Dannatt. Cowper-Coles has now gone off to work for an arms manufacturer.

There is no strategic defence justification for the US spending 5.5% of its gross domestic product on defence or Britain 2.5%, or for the Nato "target" of 2%.
These figures merely formalise existing commitments and interests. At the end of the cold war soldiers assiduously invented new conflicts for themselves and their suppliers, variously wars on terror, drugs, piracy, internet espionage and man's general inhumanity to man. None yields victory, but all need equipment. The war on terror fulfilled all Eisenhower's fears, as America sank into a swamp of kidnapping, torture and imprisonment without trial.

The belligerent posture of the US and Britain towards the Muslim world has fostered antagonism and moderate threats in response. The bombing of extremist targets in Pakistan is an invitation for terrorists to attack us, and then a need for defence against such attack. Meanwhile, the opportunity cost of appeasing the complex is astronomical. Eisenhower remarked that "every gun that is made is a theft from those who hunger" – a bomber is two power stations and a hospital not built. Likewise, each Tomahawk Cameron drops on Tripoli destroys not just a Gaddafi bunker (are there any left?), but a hospital ward and a classroom in Britain.

As long as "big defence" exists it will entice glory-hungry politicians to use it. It is a return to the hundred years war, when militaristic barons and knights had a stranglehold on the monarch, and no other purpose in life than to fight. To deliver victory they demanded ever more taxes for weapons, and when they had ever more weapons they promised ever grander victories. This is exactly how Britain's defence ministry ran out of budgetary control under Labour.

There is one piece of good news. Nato has long outlived its purpose, now justifying its existence only by how much it induces its members to spend, and how many wars irrelevant to its purpose it finds to fight. Yet still it does not spend enough for the US defence secretary. In his anger, Gates threatened that "future US leaders … may not consider the return on America's investment in Nato worth the cost". Is that a threat or a promise? .

http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gnm/op/sNxtF6R1rdy0Q8zfHlow4wg/view.m?id=15&gid=commentisfree/2011/jun/16/eisenhower-fears-invent-enemies-buy-bombs&cat=commentisfree

Get the picture?

rjk

THE POSSIBILITY OF QE3

2011-06-06T12:15:00.000-07:00

OF STOVE CLEANERS, CHEESE, AND MAKING MONEY EX NIHILO

On a recent tour of our local stores Mrs. K. has been annoyed to discover that one of her favorite house hold products, normally stocked on the “soap and cleaner’ shelves of several local stores is no longer available. The product--a stovetop cleaning agent-- was only recently easily procured and widely available, but not so now.

“Why can’t I find this items any longer?” she asked.

“Well that product may not have a lot of demand, so Green’s, Walmarts, CVS, True Value, etc. do not wish to have to replace the stock so quickly, when they are gone. They are reducing their stock of a product that they must pay for, but may not be able to sell so easily….”

“So this is just a response to the bad economy then?”

“Yes, it’s a sign of low demand.”

”Yes,” I agreed, “low demand may be the result of the fact that a good portion of the population is under employed or unemployed. Less money out there…less demand for stove-top cleaners and other stuff.”

Right now it is jobs, jobs, jobs that are on everyone’s mind. Today, I read in Portfolio.com, with some alarm that there are five applicants for every job that opens. Also, that there are some 15 million Americans out of work right now, and that nearly half a million have quit trying to find work. The formal joblessness rate is recorded as 9.6%, but that would be much worse were it not for the, nearly 500,000 who simply just quit looking.

Also the inflation rate has dropped down to 1.1% and has been holding steady at this rate for some months. That is well below the 2% rate that is considered desirable.

“That doesn’t sound too threatening. Why should I be concerned with the fact that prices are not rising much?”

“Well the problem is that such a low rate of inflation is and indicator of low consumer demand for goods and services.

“So that’s why I can’t find that “cook-top spray-cleaner, I like to use”?

“Exactly!“

“Some products which are not your big sellers are in lower demand anyway…are simply eliminated off the shelves, as a way to reduce costs and raise profits by the stores.“

“That’s one way to control expenses, but it makes me mad!“

“But more importantly, these circumstances of low demand may develop into what the economists call a “vicious deflationary cycle” in which low consumer demand causes product prices to fall, (or they may be simply eliminated as your cook top cleaner), this causes shoppers (like you and me) to retard purchases since they anticipate the continuing fall in prices (Why should you pay more for some product today when you can get some product cheaper tomorrow?). Then the store-owner, responding to low demand, may decrease prices further, while the products manufacturer or producer who is faced with less orders for his product, sells his stock at lower prices since he has too much of it, and, as well, may decide to slow production. These results exacerbate the problem and result in lower demand for labor in both the production end and in the sales end of the economy, resulting in lay offs, and firings. But job losses and reduced employment only tend to decrease money in circulation, and thus depress demand even further. The end result is a continual spiral downward of demand, as prices fall and employees are laid off. This deflationary spiral can be described as a classic “vicious cycle” or a process, which tends to exacerbate the cause or causes that generate it.

What can the Fed do? I read recently that Ben Bernanke is planning to decrease long-term interest rates (again) and stimulate growth by having the Fed purchase (“soak up”) Treasury Bonds. Treasury Bonds are safe, but they generally do not provide much interest on investment at maturity. So to encourage buyers, the government has to keep interest rates at a level high enough to encourage sales. But that impacts us down the line. So if the Fed were to buy up Treasury Bonds, that would put a cash-infusion into government coffers. It would save some dough too, by keeping interest rates lower. Since the government would have less urgency to sell bonds, they need not encourage buyers by raising interest rates. The down side is that this action would tend to decrease the value of the dollar. So we all have less buying power, particularly those on fixed incomes--like the elderly. That’s why the price of English Stilton cheese and Italian Parmigiana Reggiano have gone through the roof and the markets don’t stock them anymore.

There are times when just dropping the interest rate to zero, doesn’t help. Perhaps that might occur in those times when there is so little demand for stovetop cleaners and expensive cheese. Then there is the option of just printing more money. The government bankers don’t like to use those terms. They are too explicit and revealing. No matter that is what they are really doing. So they have developed the term “quatitative easing”, (QE). QE is a monetary policy used by central bankers to increase the supply of money. (they don’t simply dump the money on some corner on Main Street and let everyone come get it. Though that would be about what is happening. They simply write a check to themselves and drop that into their reserve account and voila! They have more money available created literally out of nothing (ex nihilo). They then use that account to buy government bonds, those awful mortgage-backed securities that no one really knows what they are getting or what they are worth, and corporate bonds or other financial instruments. That puts money into circulation, and hopefully stimulates the economy.

That takes care of the big shots and the bankers on Wall Street. Now if they could only find some way to get the unemployed back to work!

A few months later.....
Well here we are in June 6, 2011 and QE1 and QE2 have not done the trick. Oh the fat cats are doing fine…my neighbor...... who works on Wall Street and bought a home here at the height of the market FOR CASH is still tooling around with a 80G sports car. But some of his neighbors remain out of work. Others are scared silly about losing their jobs. And the latest data for last month (May 2011) shows that in May the US generated only 58,000 new jobs…not nearly enough to off set population growth (nearly 200,000 per month). So we are still going backward. The unemployed rate jumpped back up to 9.1 (from 9.0). Some are whispering about a new QE3! The plutocrats are happy with that idea, but what will it do for jobs for the average wage earner? It will only make the dollar cheaper and with cheap dollars to buy foreign oil we must shell out more dollars for each barrel—so that ploy is a punch in the eye for the common guy and gal. They will have to pay more for gasoline and that is the life blood of the economy our here on LI.

Get the picture?

A WORKS PROGRAM TO INVEST IN AMERICA

2011-06-05T07:07:00.000-07:00

I have been listening to the debate in Washington with an uneasy feeling. Both parties are simply arguing over how much of a deficit they favor. The Republicans favor draconian cuts in all of their favored budget targets, health care, child assistance, anything to do with the environment, in fact anything that might make life better for the vast majority of their co-countrymen and cost their clients, the super-wealthy, some small increase in taxes. While on the other hand, the Democrats parry these violent thrusts to the well being of the nation's poor and middle class with ineffective “feather-duster” parries which have as a goal not to defang and deflect the threat, but only to limit its effects or minimize the disaster which would envelop us all if these one-sided, mean-spirited, politically inspired and shortsighted proposals were ever to see the light of day.

Our Washington legislators are all too young to have experienced the effects of the Great Depression of the last century, as I am. But they should be familiar with our nation's history and the solutions that finally enabled this nation to raise itself out of economic stagnation. It was not deficit reduction that pulled the nation of my parents and grandparents out of the Great Depression, but the onset of WWII, which put the economy on a war-footing and provided full employment for nearly everyone. Money flowed into the hands of the poor and middleclass. That was the leavening which supported the economic revival. It only makes common sense. Would a farmer get a better crop if he concentrated his fertilizer on only a few plants in the center of his thirty-acre wheat field, or would he have a better crop by providing each plant with a tiny bit of that fertilizer? It seems plain that it is the multiplying effect of the money in the hands of the many, which will provide the most economic stimulus.

I'm not proposing here a new world war to boost the US economy. (Far from it, we are fighting two senseless and useless wars right now. In fact the billions spent on those wasteful enterprises could be invested here at home to do the economy some good.) But by placing the US on a war-footing, President Franklin Roosevelt, had reason to spend heavily. He did not cut expenditures. He increased the national debt, investing huge sums to start up industrial enterprises to support the war effort. Those works-projects were the direct stimulus which generated the economic rebound during and after the war.

Today, one need not look far to find things that need to be done here in the US, areas where our government could spend money to stimulate the economy now, and have a long-lasting effects on our over-all long-term competiveness and economic welfare. One need only to travel in western Europe to compare us to modern nations such as France or Germany to understand our weaknesses. Our infra-structure is outdated, decaying or inadequate for a modern nation. Our public buildings, sewer systems, water supply, roads, bridges, highways all need repair and or upgrading. Our train systems are antiquated, our wireless and broadband access is inadequate for a modern industrialized nation. There is little modern infrastructure such as smart-grid power, access to green energy sources or nation-wide universal broadband.
Today there are millions of Americans unemployed (the formal figure is 9.1% but estimates of the actual un-and under-employed or no-longer-looking put the figure at 15%. These individuals could be put to work here, were the American government to institute a massive works program. That would put money where it is needed in the hands of people.

Where can these funds come from? Let's begin by defunding the wasteful and counter-productive wars we are fighting abroad. No one in government of out has been able to explain what purposes the Afghanistan, Iraq and Libyan wars serve. They have cost us and continue to cost hundreds of billions of dollars annually in only direct costs. An additional source of funds could come from taxes on the upper echelons of the income brackets who now pay lower taxes than they ever did since the 1950s. At present the major tax burden falls onto the working middle class wage earners who pay 35% of their wages and have no loop-holes and deductions...while the oligarchs, elites, entrepreneurs all pay a small fraction of that amount --or none at all. Let us defund these worthless war expenditures increase taxes on the wealthy and use those funds to focus on rebuilding America. Improve our nation so that it will be able to compete with other modern nations in the long run and all of us can share in its affluence, not only a small minority at the top.

THE END FOR NUCLEAR POWER IN GERMANY

2011-05-31T08:19:00.000-07:00

Nuclear power, always considered environmentally challenging by the average informed person, as its long and expensive planning and approval processes have consistently indicated, has finally come to the end of its short life--at least in Germany and Switzerland. Here too, in the US it was essentially a dead issue up to recently (with no new plants approved in decades, after the disasters of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl sunk home into the public consciousness). That is until President Obama raised it from the dead with his plan to build new plants in response to the oil crisis. But that was at a time when the country was reeling from a reactionary groundswell, fed in part by a gut-response to the election of a black president, and economic issues such as the collapse of the housing and financial bubble, the resulting Great Recession, a huge government layout to save the banks, a monster deficit, three wars going at once, and a government that now borrows 40 cents on every dollar it spends. My opinion was that Obama just wanted to keep his head above water as he dodged the rotten fruit being tossed his way by the discontented right, and even some of us in the middle. His decision was in part the political reality of a weak president having to throw a few bones to the yelping dogs on his right.

As has been the case for the last eleven years, under the administrations of G.W Bush and Obama (who seems to have taken on the political identity one may characterizes as a more elegant and erudite "dark phase Bush"), the rest of the cognizant, rational world has attempted to forge ahead into the 21st Century to face the problems visible and foreseen on the horizon, while here in the USA under Obama's leadership we appear to be leading the charge back into the 19th century! To understand that statement let's look at one aspect of our government's decision making history in recent years relating to nuclear power.

The devastating images of the tragedy in Japan have flooded the airwaves in recent months, daily underscoring the helplessness of one of the world's most technically proficient and socially structured societies as they attempt to face one of the most mindboggling, set of multifaceted technical, social, biological and economic crises ever to affect that nation. the images and the facts have pushed decision-makers around the world to properly rethink their dependence on nuclear power. In the crisis in Japan, they see a modern nation faced with myriad problems unleashed by this man-made disaster which will haunt that nation for generations to come and leave parts of it scarce land-area as nuclear exclusion zones for thousands of years. What sane leader would want have his or her nation take the same chances? Which nations could calm their fears by stating: "that can't happen here!" Can they claim: it would not happen here because: we are better prepared, or more technically savvy, or have a more homogeneous and compliant society? No, there are none which can make those statements honestly. Japan is (or was) all of those things as well as the third largest economy in the world. If it can happen to Japan--who built the very same GE-designed nuclear plants we use today here in the USA--it can and will happen here and elsewhere too. Just give it time.

So the world's reaction against nuclear is only a rational response to the recent fallout, both figurative and actual, from the disaster at the nuclear plant at Fukishima, as well as the history of past disasters in that accident-plagued industry (though they will deny it and claim thousands of years of continual safe use). Some of the world's thoughtful and well-informed leaders have rightly put the cap on the foolish and dangerous flirtation with nuclear energy (begun here in USA during the Eisenhower administration only as a public relations ploy). Not so in the USA, where, for a large segment of the ill-informed population, a two-thousand year-old (plus) Judeo-Christian tract holds sway as a the font of all factual information (even regarding nuclear power which could not have been dreamt of by the authors), others decry modern science, and some place their confidence in a form or pseudoscience, termed "revealed science" while the masses are uninformed, or too busy trying to make ends meet to care.

Those who actually try to evaluate facts have added up the threats from the Chernobly disaster, Three Mile Island, and now the Fukishima accident and have concluded that there is a necessity for reevaluation of our dependance on nuclear power. On the other hand, the Obama administration and the reactionary USA, remain adamantly against change and modernity, and unable to disengage from the money and sway of the nuclear power industry. They refuse to alter plans for expanding our dependency on a source of power now deemed too dangerous to allocate to the geenrations of our children and grandchildren by most of the world's thoughtful leaders.

Today, May 31, 2011, I read in the NYTimes that Germany, under the center-right government of Angela Merkel, fourth largest economy in the World after USA, China, and Japan, has decided to close its 17 nuclear power plants permanently by 2022. They will have eleven years to accomplish that goal. Angela Merkel, a PhD in physics, who knows the science of nuclear power, has concluded that nuclear power is "too dangerous and too unpredictable to put our faith in long term". Germany, which is dependent upon about one-fourth of its power from nuclear (as is the US)has decided to turn to renewables, solar power, hydroelectric, and conservation to make up the difference. The decision,states Merkel, will make the Germans more capable of dealing with the coming energy shortages and disruptions, increase jobs, and give that nation a technical edge in the mid and latter part of the 21 century when other nations will be struggling to survive oil shortages and nuclear exclusions zones which last for thousands of years. Switzerland which also is dependent upon a substantial percent of nuclear derived power is also abandoning these plants by 2035. So goes the attitudes in the more progressive, logical and objective-thinking parts of the modern world. Here in the USA were are still proceeding in the opposite direction.

S&P question US AAA rating

2011-04-19T11:05:00.000-07:00

FRENCH PLACE MOSLEM WOMEN IN A MORTON’S FORK DILEMMA

2011-04-11T15:19:00.000-07:00

Today, April 11, 2011 is a day of shame for the French—the birthplace of modern democracy which on this date banned the veil for Muslim women. Such laws are not new. Similar regulations were imposed on Jews in Tsarist Russia in the 19th century (the May Laws of May 15, 1882) which among other injustices, prohibited the Hasidim from wearing their traditional kaftan head-covering or displaying their long side-locks in public. In modern day France, some estimate there are perhaps only 2000 Muslim women in all of the country who follow the tradition of wearing the burka or niqab in public places. The new law, which exacts a fine of about $200 dollars for each infraction, would seem to have the undesired effect of simply forcing this small minority of (isolated and possibly maltreated) Muslim women to live an even more-cloistered life restricted to their homes. The new French law places these women in a variant of a Morton’s Fork dilemma that presents them with two equally undesirable choices: either break a deeply-held emotional and religious conviction, or be humiliated in public and pay a substantial fine. To force upon a person such a decision is unfair and unbecoming of a great democracy such as France. Wouldn’t it be better to permit them the freedom to express their religious beliefs as they see fit-- and for a just state to ignore their dress preferences, which by all accounts harm no-one. By singling them out this way, France has now instituted a state “dress code” for its Muslim population, the second largest religious group in the nation. One wonders will they next institute legislation to control habits of Catholic nuns, or the size or color of the head-covering elderly Catholic women wear when they attend mass, or will they force the Hasidim to cut their beards, or stop the cruel practice of circumcising their infant boys. This seems a sorry day for human dignity and religious freedom in France. What will come next?

* Morton’s Fork dilemma. Named after John Morton, Lord Chancellor of England in 1487, who under the rule of Henry VII decreed that if a man lived in luxury and spent a lot of money he must have excess cash and his tax should be raised. On the the other hand, if a man lived frugally, with no signs of wealth, he must have saved a lot of cash and therefore his taxes should be raised.

THE ONE PERCENTERS

2011-04-08T12:38:00.000-07:00

You have heard the Republicans complain about "confiscatory" taxes. Their complaint is that their clients-- the just plain wealthy, the super-wealthy, and the true oligarchs--do not want their “hard won” profits to be confiscated by the government. The awful truth is: it’s the other way around---the oligarchs are confiscating the nation’s wealth.

According to G Wiliam Domhoff ( Univ California) in “Wealth Income, and Power, (9-2009 updated 1-2011) “wealth in the US is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands”. That fact probably comes as a shock to most of you (readers). Based on a recent study, most Americans from every walk of life and political persuasion have no idea just how unevenly wealth is distributed in this nation (Demhoff quotes a study by Norton & Ariely, 2010) But who would believe that the top 20% of the population controls more than 90% of the nation’s liquid assets?

First a few definitions. Wealth is defined by Demhoff and other sociologists as what we would call “net worth”, the value of everything a person or family owns, minus its debts. The figures that most economists use to calculate this value are “marketable assets” such as homes, land, commercial properties, stocks and bonds—all those items that are readily convertible into cash, but not cars and household items, which are valuable to people for personal use but difficult to convert into ready cash for investment. Financial wealth is defined as “non-home-wealth” or a person’s or family’s net-worth, minus the family’s “home value” (net worth-minus net-equity in owner–occupied housing). This latter term is a better measure of a person’s or family’s “liquid” assets which may be available for consumption or investment.

According to Demhoff, net-wealth in the USA is highly concentrated in just a few hands. As of 2007, according to figures compiled by our government, the top 1% of households (people with incomes of a 500,000 to a million dollars or more annually--and referred to here as "one-percenters" owned nearly 35% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (managerial, professional, and small business owners) held 51%. That means that the top 20% of the nation’s families owned (35+51) more than 85% of all the private wealth in the nation, leaving less than 15% to be distributed by the bottom 80% (the wage and salary workers)! If we examine the "financial wealth" of the top group, the picture becomes even more skewed toward the higher income level, since ownership of a private home is such a large portion of middle class American wealth. Thus in a measure termed “financial wealth” (defined as net wealth minus home value) a clearer understanding of the liquid assets of the top 1% may be visualized. In that analysis, the top 1% of households held 43% of the nation’s financial wealth, the next 19% held 50%, and the workers and salaried people held only 7%. Thus in terms of “financial wealth” the top 20% of the population hold 93% of all liquid or disposable privately held wealth.

So when you hear the term “confiscatory” taxes, or of certain classes of people unwilling to pay their fair share…review these figures for a better understanding of what they want. It seems to me they have most of the "pie" now. Apparently what they appear to be seeking is to have it all!

Keep in mind that the top 1% (of wage-earners and simply wealthy) have in the last several decades cornered the vast majority of the nation's income. Considering the disparity in wealth, is it any wonder that these same individuals wield a much greater share of political power? Since money can buy control of the media as well as the government, the one-percenters not only have the raw power that wealth brings, but also control of the "story". With such breadth of control they are able to control public opinion and by means of paid lobbyists, mold legislation to their own needs.

Since the “one-percenters” (who have enough money to provide more than adequately for all their own and their family's requirements) they have no need for government supported basic health care, or public transit, or good roads, or good schools or the basic infrastructure which is a requisite for a well-run functioning society and for a decent life for the vast majority of Americans. The one-percenters' agenda is to limit government expenditures for these services. They seek to decrease taxes and government spending on basic infrastructure, since such outlays would only increase their taxes for services which they perceive they do not need or use. Furthermore, since they (and their children) are highly unlikely to serve in the military where they might be placed in harms way--they see military intervention in quite a different light than the rest of us. And perhaps more importantly, they envision financial gain in the hideous concept of endless war-and so they tend to favor military solutions to all our foreign problems great and small. Furthermore, government funds that are allocated to "defence" are unavailable for domestic infrastructure development--in effect this "starving of the governemnt coffers" serves to limit spending in the areas that the one-percenters see as of no utility to their goals. On the other hand, war and military spending is a fine make-work and jobs-programs for the elite, super-wealthy. These defence expenditures serve the one-percenters by moving vast sums into military projects where they can generate enormous profits from government contracts. One has only to recall the intensity and single mindedness with which Bush and Cheney promoted their Iraq war which was planned as and turned out to be a giant giveaway for the one-percenter crowd.

Thus the “one percenters” have taken control of our nation's media and government and turned it into a system which serves them and only them. They have helped to mold us into a nation of low taxes for the ultra wealthy, a hog-tied ineffective government which can not support the basic infrastructure or needs of its citizens, but which supports a bloated, make-work program for the military-industrial complex which their heirlings continue to categorize as our “defence budget”.

So my dear citizen-friends every time you make an expenditure that might have better been provided by a more just and equitable government, the difference you must lay out is the amount that the one-percenters and their facilitators have purloined and allocated to themselves. When you must pay your physician for a larger and larger “co-pay” for health services, or your kids are ill-served or struggling in poorly funded and staffed schools (and you must fork over cash for a tutor or a private school), or you lose a tire to a pot-holed and unreparied road, or you have no basic rapid transit system to get to your job when gas prices go sky high, or perhaps your job has been "off-shored" and you have no job. In those times think of the “one-percenters” who have more than their share of wealth and income, but pay less than their share of taxes—or often no taxes. Think of them each time you put your hand in your pocket to make-up the difference from what a just government should have provided you and what our one-percenter dominated government presently provides and remember that you must pay because they are not paying. In fact, because money is fungible…the money you pull from your pocket goes in effect directly into their pockets. The one-percenters do not spend their money to increase jobs here. They spend it perhaps on a ten-thousand acre ranch in Brazil, or a fifteen-room penthouse in Manhattan, or a second Lear jet, or a trip to some far-off vacation paradise--but not on infrastructure in this USA of ours. The one-percenters are parasites that must be made to pay their fair share. If you finally get the picture perhaps you will get mad enough to do something about it.

Get the picture?

OBAMA'S LYBIA WAR--AEGRESCIT MEDENDO

2011-03-31T04:36:00.000-07:00

The news that Obama has moved to open a new front and a new war in Libya is another example of American military interventionism in Muslim lands which will likely add another sad page to the already sad history of those places. In similar circumstances in the oldest and first democracy of ancient Athens, the great philospher, Socrates (469 BC -399BC) would have been plying the Agora, cornering members of the boule to use his questions (elenchus or the Socratic method) to probe the validity of the decisions of the Greek archons (leaders) of his time. But in modern America, few raise any serious questions. Our government, press and citizens all seem to fall in line with our President's statements, however untrue or even ridiculous they appear.

When I heard of Obama's plan to enter Libya brandishing cruise missiles, cluster bombs and napalm canisters---to be used only for humanitarian purposes" a quote from Virgil, (aka Publius Vergilius Maro, Roman Poet, 70BC to 19BC) popped into my mind. It is: "Aegrescit Medendo" which literally means "it becomes worse for the treatment used," but is often translated as "the cure is worse than the disease". This seemed so appropriate to the present case. Can anyone truly believe that Obama's motives are what he states and he is acting so belligerently in Libya to save human life? To me, Obama seems more a man ready to acquiesce to the existing power structure when he thinks he is cornered, or because he perceives some political gain in his aquiescence. His deep, dark eyes are presently focused, not on saving the lives of Libya's insurgents, but on saving his 2012 election bid--where he perceives a need to present a tough, macho persona to the electorate in November next. In politics, looking tough is more important than making tough decisions. One need not look further than his troop-surge in Afghanistan and its expansion into neighboring Pakistan, for evidence of what can go wrong with a largely aerial war. In both these places there are too numerous instances of "accidents, mistaken-identity, and also some obviously purposeful cruise-missile strikes and bombings targeting innocent civilians (at this juncture, I can not pass up the opportunity to remind my readers of the recent tragic deaths of nine(9)--young Afghan boys ages 9-14 who were blasted to smithereens by US bombs as they peacefully collected firewood for their parents on a hillside.) To "suppress" Libyan-air-defenses (read destroy emplacements and kill operators) there will have to be many strikes which will no doubt kill scores of innocent civilians who happen to live near-by, since many defense facilities are sited in populous areas. In what Obama proposes civilian casualties are inevitable. Therefore Obama's stated "cure" to prevent the potential for a "slaughter of innocents" is certain to slaughter innocents. Furthermore, I found his language simply too reminiscent of George Bush's syntax and rationale when GW presented his cooked-up reasons for going to war in Iraq to protect the US from the "possibility" of nuclear holocaust, by creating a conventional holocaust where nearly a million Iraqis lost their lives. It seems that Obama's rational is: if the patient needs a tooth pulled to ease the pain in his jaw, send in a surgeon to cut off the patient's head. That tooth will not hurt him any more! Agrescit medendo!

After writing that last paragraph a second quote from Virgil came to mind: "Facilis descensus averni"--(Aen.6.126) "Easy is the descent into Hell". One need not have a degree in military history to recall how unpredictable war is. And also how quickly motives and military missions magically change and morph from one thing into another. Your memory bank need go back no further than Bush II's Iraq war where, "sending a message" became, "finding weapons of mass destruction", which altered to: "spreading democracy", which changed to: "making the Middle East safe", and which finally resulted in a plaintive and surly: "getting rid of Saddam". Bush and Cheney expressed so many different aims of war over such a short period of time that it would often make one's head spin. These changes in reasons, purpose and motives are of-course tailored by our leaders to fit the political needs and vagaries of the day, minute, or to explain away unpleasant realities of the war enterprise. These alterations are termed "mission creep" by the military. Thus as Virgil stated, It's so easy to descend into hell! "Facilis descensus averni". But what is more disgraceful than a politician who affronts us with bald-faced lies (as he spends money we do not have to send our young men and women into harms way, and for highly questionable purposes)? Unhappily, such behavior is something that we almost come to expect from them! But what is more disgusting than a mendacious politician is a compliant electorate and citizenry in which no one speaks up to confront the lies and misrepresentations. Instead, Americans all line up to nod their collective heads in agreement as the President and his functionaries (and the press) shovel the manure our way. Oh where are our skeptics and our questioners? Where is our Socrates?