Harlan County USA Download

There is little wonder Barbara Kopple’s film, Harlan County USA, won the Oscar for best documentary in 1977. But to watch the thing today you almost feel it's worthy of another one. The difference then, it was a contemporary film, today, it is a brilliant piece of social history.

Historically speaking though, quite young, 1968, a year that saw me with my first new car, the now as then, classic 68 Plymouth Road Runner. And for me it is the fact that this whole different world existed contemporaneously and just down the road so to speak, that makes it all the more fascinating.

There are lots of things about this documentary that are worthy of comment, the choice of music undoubtedly, a spokesman for the mine owners, flatly denying any proven link between coal dust and Black Lung to name but another, and the union boss, John L Lewis, whose sheer presence, is today, something so rarely found in any man.

I couldn't recommend this classic piece of film more highly. These are my ups, so they are quite safe.

68 Road Runner

Harlan County U.S.A. - a Documentary Review
Director Barbara Kopple Records the Epic Struggle of Coal Miners

Between the 1968 mine explosion to the murder of the union's Yablonski and his family, Harlan County fights long and hard to overcome their own domination by mine owners.

Director Barbara Kopple lived with the coal miners in the Harlan County black hills for over two years in order to document their history. While the film began as a record of the search for power between UMW presidents, it changed into a film about the coal miners when a strike began creating drama right before the camera lens.

Harlan County U.S.A. is An American Saga of Rich vs. Poor

The interests of corporations dominating the interests of human beings to live and survive join forces in this cinema verite treatment of the topic. Kopple did not use narration, but allowed the people involved in the real life struggle for rights to speak for themselves. This gives the film a participant's eye on events rather than that of a dispassionate viewer. She has captured the lifestyle of a humble but proud people who have been pushed to the edges, marginalized and dominated by a single-industry economic base which leaves everyone vulnerable. After a mine explosion in 1968 left 78 men dead, the surviving families began to grow in their anger towards the mining company.

Notable in the film is the use of protest music, including songs by Hazel Dickens and Florence Reese. "Which Side Are You On?" reverbates throughout the town as the miners prepare to strike. Local mountain music and musicians are also integrated into the film, with strikers singing "We Shall Not Be Moved," or "Let It Shine." The music, like the rest of the movie, resonates with authenticity. While Kopple has been criticized for taking a side herself in the film, there are clips showing the speeches of those in power and their behavior during strikes. One particular clip is of the sheriff, caught in the middle, but siding himself with the power brokers.

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Harlan County, USA
The miners’ struggle

HARLAN COUNTY, USA, Barbara Kopple’s feature length film about a coal miners’ strike in Kentucky, is the best U.S. documentary in a long time. The film has its faults. Its editing is ragged; its narrative structure is confusing and begins to unravel towards the end. But its faults are the consequence of its virtues: an energy, immediacy, and passion rarely seen in a U.S. documentary. The film’s power comes from Kopple’s intimate involvement with the people she filmed, the risks she took, the places—jails, courtrooms, stockholder’s meetings—into which she forced her camera. Its strength lies not in its beauty, nor even in its politics, but in the moral authority that is inscribed in every frame.

There is no bloodier chapter in the history of U.S. labor than the struggle of coal miners, and some of the most violent episodes within this chapter occurred in Harlan County, Kentucky. The people who live there remember it as “bloody Harlan,” the site of fierce battles between miners and coal companies that culminated on May 4, 1931, in a shootout that left a large number of dead and wounded. The song that fixed this struggle forever in the folklore of U.S. labor—“Which Side are You On?”—plays an important role in the film, both as a constant reminder of the historical continuity of the miners’ fight, and as a commentary, of sorts, on the kind of partisan filmmaking practiced by Kopple and her crew.

Things haven't improved much in Harlan County since the thirties. The statistics tell a grim story. Its population, now 40,000, has declined by 36 percent since 1960. More than 24 babies out of every thousand die before reaching the age of one. If they do live long enough to enter school, they will be poorly educated. The expenditure per child on public school is one half the national average. Only 23 percent of those over the age of 25 have finished high school. Whether they have or not, they are likely to live their lives in poverty. The median family income in Harlan County is $4,600. People have only a 50-50 chance of living in a home with plumbing. Many will not find work. If they do, it will probably be in the mines, where they will die young—most likely of black lung disease.

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Barbara Kopple's Film is a Classic Historical Epic of Struggle for Justice

This is a significant film that represents part of American history and a particularly American experience. The film clips of men suffering with black lung, of grieving mothers and wives, of the poverty in the area, the ugly barren hills that the mine created in its wake, and most importantly, the faces of the people who fight so valiantly for a decent life for their families are all witnessed. The violence of political and financial domination are captured, too, as the United Mine Workers fight for a new and independent president. The raw truth of the true cost of coal is seen in Kopple's film. It is a classic and is as significant today as it was in 1976.

* 1977
* 103 minutes
* Best Documentary, Oscar, 1977
* Special Award, L.A. Film Critics Association, 1977
* National Film Registry, NFPB, 1990

Update: Files timed out.

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699MB total 1hr 45m join with hjsplit English subs if required, no pass.

Japan is Fucked, The Planet is Fucked, We're All Fucked

But not half as fucked as the victims of the criminally negligent Government of Japan are going to be.

The reticence demonstrated by the Japanese Government and its failure to take positive action in evacuating its citizens from the ever increasing fallout zone around the Fukushima plant, is, as I say, nothing short of criminal.

Preferring to shift its responsibilities onto the shoulders of a for profit company, whose record so far, has been to lie and play down every situation in this ever worsening disaster, and admitting to the truth only when inevitable or forced, will show a dereliction of duty that will be the shame of successive governments for generations to come.

'No safe levels' of radiation in Japan
Experts warn that any detectable level of radiation is "too much".
04 Apr 2011

In a nuclear crisis that is becoming increasingly serious, Japan’s Nuclear Safety Agency confirmed that radioactive iodine-131 in seawater samples taken near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex that was seriously damaged by the recent tsunami off the coast of Japan is 4,385 times the level permitted by law.

Airborne radiation near the plant has been measured at 4-times government limits.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, the company that operates the crippled plant, has begun releasing more than 11,000 tons of radioactive water that was used to cool the fuel rods into the ocean while it attempts to find the source of radioactive leaks. The water being released is about 100 times more radioactive than legal limits.

Meanwhile, water that is vastly more radioactive continues to gush into the ocean through a large crack in a six-foot deep pit at the nuclear plant. Over the weekend, workers at the plant used sawdust, shredded newspaper and diaper chemicals in a desperate attempt to plug the area, which failed. Water leaking from the pit is about 10,000 times more radioactive than water normally found at a nuclear plant

Thus, radiation from a meltdown in the reactor core of reactor No. 2 is leaking out into the water and soil, with other reactors continuing to experience problems.

Yet scientists and activists question these government and nuclear industry “safe” limits of radiation exposure.

“The U.S. Department of Energy has testified that there is no level of radiation that is so low that it is without health risks,” Jacqueline Cabasso, the Executive Director of the Western States Legal Foundation, told Al Jazeera.

Her foundation monitors and analyzes U.S. nuclear weapons programs and policies and related high technology energy, with a focus on the national nuclear weapons laboratories.

Cabasso explained that natural background radiation exists, “But more than 2,000 nuclear tests have enhanced this background radiation level, so we are already living in an artificially radiated environment due to all the nuclear tests.”

“Karl Morgan, who worked on the Manhattan project, later came out against the nuclear industry when he understood the danger of low levels of ionizing radiation-and he said there is no safe dose of radiation exposure,” Cabasso continued, “That means all this talk about what a worker or the public can withstand on a yearly basis is bogus. There is no safe level of radiation exposure. These so-called safe levels are coming from within the nuclear establishment.”

Risk at low doses

Karl Morgan was an American physicist who was a founder of the field of radiation health physics. After a long career in the Manhattan Project and at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, he became a critic of nuclear power and weapons. Morgan, who died in 1999, began to offer court testimony for people who said they had been harmed by the nuclear power industry.

“Nobody is talking about the fact that there is no safe dose of radiation,” Cabasso added, “One of the reasons Morgan said this is because doses are cumulative in the body.”

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a report in 2006 titled Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) report, VII Phase 2. NAS BEIR VII was an expert panel who reviewed available peer reviewed literature and wrote, “the committee concludes that the preponderance of information indicates that there will be some risk, even at low doses.”

The concluding statement of the report reads, “The committee concludes that the current scientific evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that there is a linear, no-threshold dose-response relationship between exposure to ionizing radiation and the development of cancer in humans.”

This means that the sum of several very small exposures to radiation has the same effect as one large exposure, since the effects of radiation are cumulative.

For weeks engineers from Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) have been working to restore power to the plant and have resorted to having seawater sprayed on radioactive fuel rods that have been at risk of meltdown.

Despite this, Japanese officials conceded to the public on March 31 that the battle to save four crippled nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has been lost. On March 29 a US engineer who helped install the reactors at the plant said he believed the radioactive core in unit No. 2 may have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on to a concrete floor.

Tepco’s chairman, Tsunehisa Katsumata, said they had “no choice” but to scrap the No’s 1-4 reactors, but held out hope that the remaining two could continue to operate, despite the fact that he admitted the nuclear disaster could last several months. It is the first time the company has admitted that at least part of the plant will have to be decommissioned.

But the government’s chief spokesman, Yukio Edano, repeated an earlier call for all six reactors at the 40-year-old plant to be decommissioned. “It is very clear looking at the social circumstances,” he said.

Even after a cold shutdown, scrapping the plant will likely take decades, and the site will become a no-man’s land.

Tonnes of nuclear waste sit at the site of the nuclear reactors, and enclosing the reactors by injecting lead and encasing them in concrete would make it safe to work and live a few kilometres away from the site, but is not a long-term solution for the disposal of spent fuel, which will decay and emit fission fragments over tens of thousands of years.

Near the plant, the radiation levels dangerously escalated to 400 milliseiverts/hour. Considering background radiation is on the order of 1 milliseivert per year, this means a yearly background dose every 9 seconds, based on industry and governmental “allowable” radiation exposure limits.

That compares with a national “safety standard” in the U.S. of 250 millisieverts over a year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says a single dose of 1,000 millisieverts is enough to cause internal hemorrhaging.

Meanwhile, more than 168 citizens organizations in Japan submitted a petition to their government on March 28 calling for an expanded evacuation zone near the Fukushima nuclear disaster site. The groups are also calling for other urgent measures to protect the public health and safety.

Residents of evacuated areas near the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant have been warned that they may not be able to return to their homes for months as Japan’s nuclear crisis stretched into a third week.

The neighbourhoods near the plant will remain empty “for the long term”, Yukio Edano, the country’s chief cabinet secretary, said on April 1.

Though he did not set a timetable, he said residents would not be able to return permanently “in a matter of days or weeks. It will be longer than that”.

The official evacuation zone remains only 20 kilometres, while the government has encouraged people within 30 kilometres to evacuate.

Yet levels of cesium-137 in the village of Iitate, for example, have been measured at more than twice the levels that prompted the Soviet Union to evacuate people near Chernobyl. Iitate is 40 kilometres northwest of Fukushima.

Radioactive Iodine has already been found in the tap water in all of Tokyo’s 23 wards.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission had already recommended an 80-kilometre evacuation zone for U.S. citizens in Japan.

Fukushima as Chernobyl

This month marks the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

“There are still no-go areas there, and the workers town has long since been abandoned, and we are seeing radioactive refugees from there, like we are now seeing generated in Japan,” Dr Kathleen Sullivan, a disarmament educator and activist who has been engaged in the nuclear issue for over 20 years told Al Jazeera, “Tepco is trying to cover their rear-end, and the Japanese government is being cagey about it, and I believe people don’t understand that radiation is a major problem and issue.”

Dr Sullivan, cited Albert Einstein, who said, “The splitting of the atom changed everything, save man’s mode of thinking; thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe.”

“So we don’t understand this mistake because of the timeless invisible nature of the problem that radiation is,” Sullivan, who has been an education consultant to the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, added.

Some experts have warned of a nightmare scenario where clouds of radioactive material could spread lethal toxins across the planet for months on end if the spent fuel rods catch fire due to lack of coolant.

The Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics of Vienna told New Scientist on March 24: “Japan’s damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima has been emitting radioactive iodine and caesium at levels approaching those seen in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Austrian researchers have used a worldwide network of radiation detectors – designed to spot clandestine nuclear bomb tests – to show that iodine-131 is being released at daily levels 73 per cent of those seen after the 1986 disaster. The daily amount of caesium-137 released from Fukushima Daiichi is around 60 per cent of the amount released from Chernobyl.”

The same group of scientists stated, “The Fukushima plant has around 1760 tonnes of fresh and used nuclear fuel on site,” while, “the Chernobyl reactor had only 180 tonnes.”

According to a report from the New York Academy of Sciences, due to the Chernobyl disaster, 985,000 people have died, mainly from cancer, between 1986-2004.

Monitors have detected tiny radioactive particles which have spread from the reactor site across the Pacific to North America, the Atlantic and even Europe.

Andrea Stahl, a senior scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, told Reuters, “It’s only a matter of days before it disperses in the entire northern hemisphere.”

Tens of thousands of people living near the plant have been evacuated or ordered to stay indoors, while radioactive materials have leaked into the sea, soil and air.

Last week also marked the 32nd anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in Middletown, Pennsylvania, in the United States.

250,000 years of radiation

Sullivan explained that when dealing with long-lived radioactive materials, in addition to carcinogens there are inter-generational effects that include the mutation of the genetic structure of life.

“This is permanent and irreversible,” she added.

Sullivan uses Fukushima reactor No. 3 as an example, because it is fueled with Mox fuel uranium and plutonium. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years, which means it is carcinogenic and mutagenic for up to 250,000 years, or 12,000 human generations.

A radioactive half-life means that in this case, in 24,000 years, half of the ionizing radiation will have decayed, then in another 24,000 years half of that radiation will decay, etc.

“That’s not really understandable or explainable in a conventional sense of knowing,” Sullivan said, “We have to apply our moral imagination to 12,000 generations to even begin to understand what we are doing in this moment.” Aljezeera

Billy Batshit Kristol Update: The Bush-Obama-Neocon Doctrine

The Bush-Obama-Neocon Doctrine
by Michael Tennant

It’s official: When it comes to foreign policy, Barack Obama’s first term is really George W. Bush’s third.

Bill Kristol, son of the late neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol and editor of the Weekly Standard, declared that Obama is “a born-again neocon” during a March 30 appearance on the Fox News Channel’s Red Eye w/Greg Gutfeld. Kristol’s remark came in the context of a discussion of Obama’s consultation with Kristol and other influential columnists prior to his March 28 address to the nation about his military intervention in Libya. Gutfeld quizzed Kristol about the President’s asking him for “help” with his speech. Kristol denied that Obama had sought his help. Instead, Kristol said,

He came to me to make sure I was supporting his sound policies. Of course, since his sound policies are now more like the policies people like me have been advocating for quite a while, I’m happy to support them, you know. He’s a born-again neocon.

In case anyone missed the significance of Kristol’s comment, Gutfeld made it clear: “We’ve got the drones. We’ve got military tribunals. We’ve got Gitmo. We’re bombing Libya. People who voted for Obama got four more years of Bush.”

Kristol agreed, adding: “What’s the joke — they told me if I voted for McCain, we’d be going to war in a third Muslim country…. I voted for McCain and we’re doing it.”

Of course, to Kristol, calling someone a neocon is a compliment.....more

Previous

Poisoning The Ocean: Japan to Release Radioactive Water Into The Sea

But don't worry, it's only low-level radioactive seawater and there's only ten thousand tons of it. Just a drop in the ocean.

Japan to release radioactive water into the sea

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese engineers on Monday were forced to release radioactive water into the sea while resorting to desperate measures such as using bath salts to try to find the source of the leaks at a crippled nuclear power complex.

Engineers also planned to build a giant silt curtain in the ocean to stop the spread of more contamination from the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The plant operator had to release low-level radioactive seawater that had been used to cool overheated fuel rods after it ran out of storage capacity for more highly contaminated water, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edanosaid.

Operator Tokyo Electric Power(TEPCO) said it would release over 10,000 tons of contaminated water that was about 100 times more radioactive than legal limits.

Engineers are still struggling to regain control of damaged reactors at the plant in the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986, with the government urging TEPCO to act faster to stop radiation spreading.

But it could take months to stem the leaks, warned one official, and even longer to regain control of the power station, damaged by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

"We need to stop the spread of (contaminated water) into the ocean as soon as possible. With that strong determination, we are asking Tokyo Electric Power Co to act quickly," said Edano.

"If the current situation continues for a long time, accumulating more radioactive substances, it will have a huge impact on the ocean."

In the face of Japan's biggest crisis since World War Two, one newspaper poll said nearly two-thirds of voters wanted the government to form a coalition with the major opposition party and work together to recover from the natural disaster.

Underlining the concern over the impact on the world's third largest economy, a central bank survey showed big manufacturers expected business conditions to worsen significantly in the next three months, although they were not quite as pessimistic as some analysts had expected.

An aide to embattled Prime Minister Naoto Kan said on Sunday the situation at theFukushima plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, had "somewhat stabilized," but it may take months to stop radiation leaks.

At least four of the plant's six reactors will be scrapped once brought under control, but that could take decades.

BATH SALTS, SEA CURTAIN

In their desperation, TEPCO engineers have used anything at hand to try to stop the leaks.

At the weekend, they mixed sawdust and newspapers with polymers and cement in an unsuccessful attempt to seal a crack in a concrete pit at reactor No.2.

On Monday, they resorted to powdered bath salts to produce a milky color to help trace the source of the radiation leak.

TEPCO said it was also planning to drape a curtain into the sea off the nuclear plant to try to prevent radioactive silt drifting out into the ocean.

The silt-blocking fence will take several days to prepare, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA).

The exact source of the radiation leaks remains a mystery, with NISA investigating a damaged embankment near a sluice gate at the No.2 reactor and the possibility it may be seeping through a layer of small stones below a concrete pipe.

PM UNDER PRESSURE

The 9.0 magnitude quake and tsunami left nearly 28,000 people dead or missing and Japan's northeast coast a splintered wreck. The world's costliest natural disaster has hit economic production and left a damages bill which may top $300 billion.

"The damage from the nuclear crisis and the subsequent power shortage will last for several years," said Eiji Hirano, former assistant governor of the Bank of Japan.

"There's a strong chance Japan's economy will contract in the current fiscal year," he told Reuters in an interview.

After three weeks, many Japanese are angry the humanitarian disaster seems to have taken a back seat to the nuclear crisis.

More than 163,710 people are living in shelters, with more than 70,000 people evacuated from a 20 km (12 mile) no-go zone around the nuclear plant. Another 136,000 people living a further 10 km out have been told to leave or stay indoors.

Though criticized for his crisis management, voter support for Kan's government rose to 31 percent in a Yomiuri newspaper poll, from 24 percent in a survey conducted before the quake. Almost 70 percent of respondents, however, believed Kan was not exercising leadership, with 19 percent wanting him to step down.

There has been talk that Kan's Democratic Party of Japan should join forces with its main political opponent, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

But there has been no sign the two are close to any deal. Kan last month invited the head of the LDP to join the cabinet as deputy premier for disaster relief, but he declined.

YEARS OF ECONOMIC RECOVERY

Japan, one of the world's most indebted nations, faces years of recovery from the disaster and the government will need to tread carefully not to further damage the economy, said Hirano.

"What's different this time from the time of the Kobe quake (1995) is that Japan's fiscal state is much worse. The government faces the difficult task of trying to come up with funds for disaster relief without triggering a big disruption in markets," he said.

"I don't think the government will resort to big fiscal spending relying heavily on huge bond issuance. But if it does, there's a risk it will severely undermine market confidence ... That will hurt Japan's economy seriously."

Manufacturing has already slumped to a two-year low as a result of power outages and quake damage hitting supply chains and production. source and second report

The New Colonialism: Washington's Pursuit of World Hegemony by Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts, ever the realist, ever the common sense. There are parts of this article, as there are with the majority of articles that I read about on the subject of the USA. Both it and they, always conjure up an image of the alcoholic or the smack head, who, no matter how grim the situation that surrounds them, no matter what shape they are in, can always seem to manage to scrape up a few bob from somewhere to buy the next fix. Always find a few bucks for bombs.

A few billions here, a few billions there; a billion dollars, the new ten grand.

Update: A $1 billion biometrics project, just to keep an eye out for you, and another little cutey in the pipeline:

The FBI said this latest database, called the "Repository for Individuals of Special Concern," would only focus on wanted criminals, registered sex offenders and "suspected terrorists." (But of course.)

"Repository for Individuals of Special Concern," Now that is one scary motherfucker of a title, by Jesus is it. Raw Story

I think you might be needing a few more prisons when that little lot gets up and running. Did I metion the prison budget is sixty billion dollars?

The New Colonialism: Washington's Pursuit of World Hegemony

by Paul Craig Roberts
March 31, 2011

What we are observing in Libya is the rebirth of colonialism. Only this time it is not individual European governments competing for empires and resources. The new colonialism operates under the cover of “the world community,” which means NATO and those countries that cooperate with it. NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was once a defense alliance against a possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Today NATO provides European troops in behalf of American hegemony.

Washington pursues world hegemony under the guises of selective “humanitarian intervention” and “bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed peoples.” On an opportunistic basis, Washington targets countries for intervention that are not its “international partners.” Caught off guard, perhaps, by popular revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, there are some indications that Washington responded opportunistically and encouraged the uprising in Libya. Khalifa Hifter, a suspected Libyan CIA asset for the last 20 years, has gone back to Libya to head the rebel army.

Gaddafi got himself targeted by standing up to Western imperialism. He refused to be part of the US Africa Command. Gaddafi saw Washington’s scheme for what it is, a colonialist’s plan to divide and conquer.

The US Africa Command (AFRICOM) was created by order of President George W. Bush in 2007. AFRICOM describes its objective:

“Our approach is based upon supporting U.S. national security interests in Africa as articulated by the President and Secretaries of State and Defense in the National Security Strategy and the National Military Strategy. The United States and African nations have strong mutual interests in promoting security and stability on the continent of Africa, its island states, and maritime zones. Advancing these interests requires a unified approach that integrates efforts with those of other U.S. government departments and agencies, as well as our African and other international partners.”

Forty-nine countries participate in the US Africa Command, but not Libya, Sudan, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, and Ivory Coast. There is Western military intervention in these non-member countries except for Zimbabwe.

One traditional means by which the US influences and controls a country is by training its military and government officers. The program is called International Military and Education Training (IMET). AFRICOM reports that “in 2009 approximately 900 military and civilian students from 44 African countries received education and training in the United States or their own countries. Many officers and enlisted IMET graduates go on to fill key positions in their militaries and governments.”

AFRICOM lists as a key strategic objective the defeat of the “Al-Qaeda network.” The US Trans Sahara Counter Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP) trains and equips “partner nation forces “ to preclude terrorists from establishing sanctuaries and aims to “ultimately defeat violent extremist organizations in the region.”

Apparently, after ten years of “the war on terror” an omnipotent al-Qaeda now ranges across Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia in Africa, across the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the UK and is such a threat within the United States itself as to require a $56 billion “Homeland Security” annual budget.

The al-Qaeda threat, a hoax as likely as not, has become Washington’s best excuse for intervening in the domestic affairs of other countries and for subverting American civil liberties.

Sixty-six years after the end of World War II and 20 years after the Collapse of the Soviet Union, the US still has an European Command, one of nine military commands and six regional commands.

No other country feels a need for a world military presence. Why does Washington think that it is a good allocation of scarce resources to devote $1.1 trillion annually to military and security “needs”? Is this a sign of Washington’s paranoia? Is it a sign that only Washington has enemies?

Or is it an indication that Washington assigns the highest value to empire and squanders taxpayers’ monies and the country’s credit-worthiness on military footprints, while millions of Americans lose their homes and their jobs?

Washington’s expensive failures in Iraq and Afghanistan have not tempered the empire ambition. Washington can continue to rely on the print and TV media to cover up its failures and to hide its agendas, but expensive failures will remain expensive failures. Sooner or later Washington will have to acknowledge that the pursuit of empire has bankrupted the country.

It is paradoxical that Washington and its European “partners” are seeking to extend control over foreign lands abroad while immigration transforms their cultures and ethnic compositions at home. As Hispanics, Asians, Africans, and Muslims of various ethnicities become a larger and larger percentage of the populations of the “First World,” support for the white man’s empire fades away. Peoples desiring education and in need of food, shelter, and medical care will be hostile to maintaining military outposts in the countries of their origins.

Who exactly is occupying whom?

Parts of the US are reverting to Mexico. For example, demographer Steve Murdock, a former director of the US Census Bureau, reports that two-thirds of Texas children are Hispanics and concludes: “It’s basically over for Anglos.”

Ironic, isn’t it, while Washington and its NATO puppets are busy occupying the world, they are being occupied by the world. globalresearch

Inflation in Zimbabwe – Pictures

Does a Clusterfuck Have a Plan A Or a Plan B? Libya

I bring you this story not just because it falls nicely into a little slot, endorsing my words of a day or two past: Inevitable tears from the west upon discovering their master-plan for Libya, just like Bush's plan for Iraq, was no plan at all. But there again, having re-read the thing for the third time, perhaps I am.

Or is it that yer man O'Neill has the whole bollocks of the thing weighed up and sorted?

The most shortlived alliance in human history
Brendan O’Neill
22 March 2011

Usually when a Western government launches a war or some other risky foreign venture, one of the key questions on its mind is: ‘What is Plan B?’ In relation to Libya, the burning question for America, Britain and France seems to be: ‘What is Plan A?’

They have kickstarted a war without a war aim, a military mission with no clear mission, an international game where no one knows what the endgame will be. Is this a war to kill Gaddafi? British ministers think it might be, but British military officials say it shouldn’t be. What does France want? The ousting of Gaddafi, says Sarkozy - or perhaps just a boost to the confidence of the anti-Gaddafi rebels, say Sarkozy’s political colleagues. With no sense of alarm or surrealism, a Guardian editorial says: ‘The longer the bombing campaign goes on, the sooner the real issue will have to be confronted: where is it leading?’

The kind of thing normally worked out prior to the hurling of bombs into the territory of a sovereign state - the question of where it should lead, what the bombing is designed to achieve, what Plan A is - is being worked out after the fact in relation to Libya, through newspaper editorials and public spats between Western nations and between government and military officials within nations.

It is the height of recklessness, a kind of blasé barbarism, to start a war without knowing what the war is for. We are witnessing the transformation of Libya into a giant laboratory for a zany, unpredictable experiment to see what happens when you mix Tomahawk missiles with a volatile Arab uprising. It makes even the ill-considered debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan look like the height of rationality in comparison.

The made-up nature of the war, its speedy and brainless cobbling together by Western leaders keen to make a quick point by firing a few hundred missiles at Gaddafi, explains why the so-called Western alliance is so spectacularly flimsy. This must be the most shortlived alliance in human history. It lasted about 24 hours - at a push 36 hours - before Washington announced that it would ‘tone down’ its involvement and agitate for NATO to take over. Perhaps keen to satisfy the needs of the 24-hour rolling news agenda, America has just overseen the world’s first-ever outburst of 24-hour imperialism.

Meanwhile, France and Britain carry on bombing, but neither of them is capable of explaining why. The Arab League, whose support was treated by Cameron and others as a much-needed moral fig leaf to show that this was ‘not a Western initiative’, expressed its concerns about the operation less than 24 hours after it started. It’s ‘The disunited nations’, as one newspaper headline puts it this morning. The extremely shortlived nature of the alleged alliance, its corrosion and collapse almost before anyone had time to write the word ‘ally’ on a piece of paper, springs from the fact that there is no aim or logic to this war. Bereft of a strategy, lacking in tactics, missing anything resembling a goal, there is absolutely nothing to cohere a military alliance. It was dead almost as soon as it was announced.

The demise of this instantly formed and speedily forgotten ‘Get Libya!’ lobby most strikingly reveals the isolation of Washington today and the lack of purchase and reach of American power. It’s worth looking back at the last time America, Britain and France were involved in a military escapade in north Africa - during the Suez Crisis of 1956. Then, America shafted Britain and France (and Israel), reprimanding them for threatening and launching military action against Nasser’s Egypt over his nationalisation of the Suez Canal. It was a key moment in the Cold War, with America effectively asserting its postwar authority and leadership of the West by putting Britain and France in their place as second-fiddle Western nations (where they remained for decades).

That America can today bow out of a Western military venture in north Africa that was started by France, and which is now being continued by France, Britain, Denmark and, er, Qatar, speaks powerfully to the impotence of American imperialism. With no Western leadership, there is effectively a military free-for-all in Libya, where the only guiding principle is the question of how many missiles it will take before Sarkozy has made amends for his recent political mistakes in north Africa, and how many fighter-plane sorties from Norfolk it will require to prove that Cameron is a Proper Statesman. Lacking an aim and a leader, there’s no natural brake on this act of violence; it is driven more by various Western party-political whims than by anything like a colonial-style goal, and that makes it highly unpredictable, destabilising and potentially bloody.

And then there is the UK parliament, where MPs voted yesterday, by a margin of 557 to just 13, in favour of this ridiculous and destructive act of narcissistic militarism. You can tell from interviews and comments that in their heart of hearts many of these MPs know that this is a pointless and problematic military operation, yet they still do what they believe is expected of them and vote for it to continue. What a bunch of sheep. What a craven act of political slavishness, with parliament effectively turning itself into a tool of Cameron’s desperate vanity. MPs are supposed to be open-minded, thoughtful, to think about what the public wants. In this instance, they have lined up like lambs to the slaughter (of Libyans). Spiked

Plan A, ride a bike.

This was the original article that I was going to feature, until I came across the one above.

Yes, this is a humanitarian war — that is what makes it so deadly

No more terrible fate can befall nations like Libya than to become objects of Western liberal pity.
by Brendan O’Neill
31 March 2011

They’re back. Having spent the past 10 years pretending to be anti-war – describing the attack on Iraq as ‘criminal’ and the war in Afghanistan as ‘a trifle ill-judged’ – the liberal and left-wing set that originally invented the idea of ‘humanitarian warfare’ in the 1990s are once more at the forefront of public debate. They’ve cast off the anti-imperialist garb that they temporarily donned to make their disappointment with Blair and their snobbish disdain for Bush appear principled, to reveal that, underneath, there lurk the same old laptop bombardiers keen to visit their moralistic fury upon some wayward nation. This time they have Libya in their sights.

The speed with which observers who attacked Blair and Bush over Iraq have lined up behind Cameron and Obama over Libya is remarkable. Deputy British prime minister Nick Clegg says his war on Libya is a ‘different scenario from Iraq’; where Iraq was a product of the ‘trigger-happy policies’ of Blair’s ‘vigilantism’, the bombing of Libya is ‘[UN] sanctioned and driven by humanitarian concerns’. more

Archive

American Gulag

American Gulag

Evidence Is Not Necessary to Hold Guantánamo Prisoners for the Rest of Their Lives

By Andy Worthington

April 01, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- ---- If I was an American lawyer who had fought for many years to secure habeas corpus rights for the prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — in other words, the right to ask an impartial judge to rule on my captors’ reasons for slinging me in a legal black hole and leaving me to rot there forever — the latest news from the Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. (also known as the D.C. Circuit Court) would make me sick in a bucket rather than believing any longer that the law — the revered law on which the United States was founded — can bring any meaningful remedy for the prisoners at Guantánamo.

Treated as punchbags without rights when first picked up, mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, the 172 men still held at Guantánamo are still treated with scorn by the administration of Barack Obama, the standard bearer of “hope” and “change,” who promised to close Guantánamo and to do away with “the dark halls of Abu Ghraib and the detention cells of Guantánamo, [where] we have compromised our most precious values.” Instead, however, Obama has revealed himself to be nothing more than a hollow man whose ability to read from an autocue made him look caring, clever and capable when that was exactly the antidote we needed to eight years of Bush and Cheney.

Today, the reason for despair is that on Tuesday the D.C. Circuit Court reversed a ruling made last February by Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. of the District Court, in the case of Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman, a Yemeni held at Guantánamo without charge or trial since the prison opened in January 2002. Last February, after examining all the government’s supposed evidence against Uthman, Judge Kennedy ruled that, although the government had presented what appeared to be a coherent timeline of events that was typical for young men from the Gulf, recruited to visit a training camp in Afghanistan to learn to fight for the Taliban against the Northern Alliance, none of the government’s supposed evidence proving Uthman’s presence in guest houses, at a training camp, and in the Tora Bora mountains (where a showdown took place in December 2001 between remnants of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and Afghan forces recruited to fight for the Americans) was reliable.

The reason for this, Judge Kennedy concluded, was because the government’s supposed evidence consisted of statements produced by other prisoners who had been tortured, and whose testimony was therefore unreliable, as well as other witnesses whose statements were also considered to be untrustworthy.

This could have been the end of the story, and Uthman could have been released, ..... more

White House, Will You Fucking Stop!

Fuck me! is there no end to American hypocrisy?

"Freedom of assembly and freedom of expression are not only vital ingredients of sound political systems, they are essential for economic modernization and broad-based prosperity.

"Without freedom of assembly, it will be impossible to foster genuine competition during Russia's upcoming parliamentary elections in December."

I told you once already, you lost the moral high ground to Russia years ago.

US concerned at arrest of Russia protesters
Mar 31, 2011

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The White House on Thursday expressed concern at the detention of 150 people in St Petersburg and Moscow at protests highlighting the importance of the right of peaceful assembly.

Police had earlier detained opposition politicians Boris Nemtsov and Eduard Limonov as they joined hundreds of activists at protests in the Russian capital and in Saint Petersburg.

The protest was one of a series of "Strategy 31" demonstrations organized for the 31st day of the month in reference to Article 31 in the Russian constitution which permits peaceful demonstrations.

National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said Washington was concerned at the detention of Article 31 demonstrators, some of whom were chanting slogans critical of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

"The United States reiterates the importance of embracing and protecting universal values, including freedoms of expression and assembly, enshrined in the Russian Constitution as well as in international agreements Russia has signed," Vietor said.

"Freedom of assembly and freedom of expression are not only vital ingredients of sound political systems, they are essential for economic modernization and broad-based prosperity.

"Without freedom of assembly, it will be impossible to foster genuine competition during Russia's upcoming parliamentary elections in December."

The Obama administration has made much of its "reset" of relations with the Russian government of President Dmitry Medvedev, but has often also spoken out at what it sees as infringements of basic rights in the country.

In an article in the International Herald Tribune penned after he returned from Russia this month, Vice President Joe Biden warned investors could avoid Russia if there was "backsliding" on human rights.

Biden said that universal human values, real opposition parties, an independent media and impartial courts were the best tools for fighting corruption, which he said was the biggest barrier to economic growth in Russia. yahoo

Texas: Ticket The Children Not

Texas Cops Ticket Thousands of Schoolchildren to Raise Revenue, Some as Young as 6-Yrs-Old

This is how low your government will go. Cops in Texas have been writing thousands of tickets to schoolchildren for $250-$500 each for the "crime" of "misbehaving in school" so the government can raise revenue. This has been going on now for over five years.

The Texas Tribune reports:

With the rise of get-tough juvenile crime policies across Texas, the municipal courthouse has become the new principal’s office for thousands of students who get in fights, curse their teachers or are generally “disorderly” on school campuses — even in elementary schools, according to data collected from school systems by Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit research and advocacy group focusing on social and economic justice.

Dallas ISD’s police department, for instance, issued criminal citations to 92 10-year-olds in the 2006-07 school year, the latest year for which such data is available. Alief ISD’s officers issued 163 tickets to elementary school students in 2007. And “several districts ticketed a 6-year-old at least once in the last five years,” according to a recent presentation to the state Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee by Texas Appleseed. Such tickets, often given for “disorderly conduct” or “classroom disruption,” typically are handled in municipal courts or by county justices of the peace and can have fines of between $250 to $500, police and court officials say, though some courts route many students into community service in lieu of fines. [...]

Last school year, police in Houston ISD, with an enrollment of about 200,000, wrote 5,763 tickets to students, its department reported to the Tribune. The number of tickets in Houston has ranged between 4,000 and 6,000 since 2005, according to district data. Dallas ISD, with about 150,000 students, wrote nearly about 4,400 tickets in 2006-07, according to data the district reported to Texas Appleseed. (Dallas ISD officials said they could not immediately provide more updated data.) Officers in Austin ISD, with enrollment of more than 80,000, wrote 2,364 tickets in the 2007-08 school year, according to the organization’s data, a decline from a peak of more than 3,000 in 2005-06.

This is your pathetic parasite government at work. informationliberation

Six year old! what's he complaining about? at least they didn't cuff him and print him. I say him, it could just as easily have been a girl. (same link)

But it's not only in America

Obama:You Know You've Arrived When You Receive a Bill Kristol Endorsement

It’s not an endorsement Barack Obama probably expected — or wanted Now there's an understatement for you. Bill, I'm so far off my rocker I should have been living in a big house years ago, Kristol, Obama's new best friend.

I could find the picture but not the post.

Bill Kristol declares Obama ‘a born-again neo-con’ days after consulting with him on Libya policy
30/03/2011

It’s not an endorsement Barack Obama probably expected — or wanted — but Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol gave the president high marks for his recent foreign policy gestures.

In his “You’ve come a long way, baby” post Monday night, (below) Kristol praised Obama for his address to the American people about the action he took against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. On Wednesday’s “Red Eye” on the Fox News Channel, Kristol took things a step further and declared Obama “a born-again neo-con.”

Host Greg Gutfeld asked Kristol how he felt about Obama coming to him for help (reportedly the president had met with him and others prior to his Monday night address).

“He didn’t come to me for help, of course,” Kristol said. “I’m not going to acknowledge that. He came to me to make sure I was supporting his sound policies. Of course, since his sound policies are more like the policies people like me have been advocating for quite a while, I’m happy to support them. He’s a born-again neo-con.”

Throughout 2007 and 2008 in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama ran as the anti-war candidate. But Obama has taken on different stripes with this gesture, Kristol joked.

“What’s the joke – they told me if I voted for McCain, we’d be going to war in a third Muslim country?” Kristol said. “I voted for McCain and we’re doing it.” dailycaller

You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby
President Obama’s unapologetic, freedom-agenda-embracing, not-shrinking-from-the-use-of-force speech.
By William Krystol

I knew pretty early on during tonight’s speech that President Obama had rejoined—or joined—the historical American foreign policy mainstream. It was when he mentioned Charlotte (the city, not the spider):

At this point, the United States and the world faced a choice. Gaddafi declared that he would show “no mercy” to his own people. He compared them to rats, and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment. In the past, we had seen him hang civilians in the streets, and kill over a thousand people in a single day. Now, we saw regime forces on the outskirts of the city. We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi – a city nearly the size of Charlotte – could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.

When American presidents want to justify foreign interventions, and are worried the American people aren’t quite with them, they often reach for a strained analogy or comparison that will bring the situation abroad home to their fellow Americans watching on the tube. Obama’s awkward interjection explaining that Benghazi is “a city nearly the size of Charlotte” is a classic of the genre. As Obama said it, I recalled Reagan explaining Nicaragua was as near to Texas as Texas to Washington, D.C., or some such thing, and similar clunky and earnest attempts at homespun appeals by George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. I found this reassuring.

As I found the rest of the speech. The president was unapologetic, freedom-agenda-embracing, and didn’t shrink from defending the use of force or from appealing to American values and interests. Furthermore, the president seems to understand we have to win in Libya. I think we will. weeklystandard

Fucking nuts or what?

What is there to thank our soldiers for?

Still trying to bring a promised piece by Arthur Silber, I am yet again sidetracked and failed in mission. Sidetracked on Silber's instructions though I must add, where he recommends reading the complete article from which he himself took the following.

What is there to thank our soldiers for? They are not defending our freedoms. They are not keeping us safe from our enemies. They are not protecting us from terrorists. They are not guaranteeing our First Amendment rights. They are not defending U.S. borders. They are not guarding U.S. shores. They are not patrolling U.S. coasts. They are not enforcing no-fly zones over U.S. skies. They are not fighting "over there" so we don't have to fight "over here." They are not avenging 9/11. They are not safeguarding the American way of life. Oh, and they are not ensuring that I have the liberty to write what I do about the military.

Of that, more in a moment. Firstly, a little something from myself to set the mood; part of a previous article.


Tawdry Tears and Tombstones
January 20, 2007

Tawdry. Taw-dry adjective
1. showy but without real value.
2. of finery: gaudy; showy and cheap.
3. low or mean; base: tawdry motives.
4. noun. Cheap, gaudy apparel.

The first description I feel best befits this image of Bush as he sheds a tear, or do I do the man a disservice and the tear is genuine? If it is, I can but only think that it is not shed for the marine who was being honoured, but shed for George W Bush.

And is that marine buried at Arlington Mister Bush? You are hardly likely to know are you, not for you the funerals of those that you sent so eagerly to their needless deaths, no Mister Bush, for those who’s lives you ended so prematurely, just a cold patch of earth and a tombstone.
Tombstones Mister Bush, those tombstones that caused me to write these comments some time ago in a forum other than where I write this.

Shame and decency are not to be found.
Yet they offer the parents of the dead a free headstone if it bears the inscription "Operation Iraqi Freedom"

Shameless, and overflowing with abject hypocrisy. Bush knows all too well why the troops died, I hope the spirit of the countless thousands, the spirit of every dead man woman or child haunts the son of a bitch to the grave and beyond.

But he cannot see the irony of this “magnanimous” gesture, forever and a day will that inscription, “Operation Iraqi Freedom” etched in stone, mock the man and his presidency for what they truly are.

But the bitterest of ironies is lost on this fool, because forever and a day those words will be synonymous with:

“They died for nothing.”

- - -

The above, in contrast to much I have written on America's armed forces, and in contrast to the crux of the featured article. is about the most forgiving thing I have ever penned on the subject of the Pentagons hired killers. But what is writ below is something that I couldn't hold truer in my own heart.

Thank a Vet?
by Laurence M. Vance

We've all seen the bumper stickers: "My son is in the Air Force," "If You Can Read This in English, Thank a Marine," "Proud Vietnam Veteran," "Fly Navy," and of course, "Thank a Vet."

Why should we?

Why should we call them heroes, give them military discounts, grant them veterans preference, express our support for them with ribbons on our cars, honor them with a holiday, hold military appreciation church services for them, and thank them for their "service"?

Veterans Day began as Armistice Day to commemorate the signing of the armistice that ended World War I. It had nothing to do with honoring current and former members of the military like Veterans Day is celebrated today. And if the sole purpose of Armistice Day was to honor World War I veterans, it should never have been celebrated since no American soldier did anything honorable by intervening in a European foreign war. And it doesn't matter if he was drafted or not.

Britain's last World War I combat veteran, Harry Patch, died last year at the age of 111. He boasted that he hadn't killed anyone in combat. "War isn't worth one life," Patch said, it is "calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings." In his autobiography The Last Fighting Tommy, Patch wrote that "politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising nothing better than legalised mass murder." In the last years of his life, Patch warned some young naval recruits that they shouldn't join. more

Eternal Punishment: Obama Leads Third Century of Imperial Revenge on Haiti

Leaving behind for a while, the trials and tribulations of that testament to man's folly, the nuclear installation at Fukushima Japan, I thought it time I caught up on a writer I have sadly neglected since I was away blogging other things.

That writer, and much neglected on my part, the unique Arthur Silber. Let me borrow the same few lines that I used recently to introduce both Arthur Silber and his philosophical piece: Of Abortion, and Women as the Ultimate Source of Evil.

As I've said here many times before, no one that I know writing today is making the kinds of profound connections that Arthur Silber makes, year after year: drawing out the deeper implications of the operations of power on every level of our lives, from the global scope of high politics to the still, dark night of the individual psyche.- Chris Floyd

This introduction, serving both purposes as it does, the promise of things to come from Mr Silber, and to introduce you to the writer of those few words, Chris Floyd. Who I have to say, judging by this one article alone, ain't too shabby in the literary department himself.

Arthur Silber coming soon, I just need to find my something of choice, your item of interest, out of what I can only describe as a monumental output of material from Arthur Silber's pen. All of it most readable.

Eternal Punishment: Obama Leads Third Century of Imperial Revenge on Haiti
Written by Chris Floyd
Saturday, 02 April 2011 00:41

The blood and thunder (or is it thud and blunder?) of the American-led intervention in Libya has obscured one of the more revealing episodes of our times -- especially for those many millions who still cling to the idea that Barack Obama is somehow an improvement, however slight, over the ruthless, lawless, corroded souls who preceded him in the post of imperial manager.

We speak of course of the American rigging of the election in battered, helpless Haiti -- a brazen effort to disenfranchise the majority of the population and ensure the election of a vicious -- but acquiescent -- client to the presidency. This sordid episode comes complete with a personal intervention by the Nobel Peace Laureate himself to try to continue the exile and persecution of the democratically elected Haitian president overthrown by George W. Bush in a brutal coup.

Even as he was scheming with the CIA to put covert American "boots on the ground" in the Libyan civil war, Obama and his dream team have been maneuvering like mad to put one of a pair of right-wing fanatics into office in Haiti while excluding any other candidates from the running -- including those from Haiti's biggest political party. Obama also personally called South African President Jacob Zuma to ask to keep holding Bush-ousted former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Africa and prevent him from returning to his native land before the election.

With the sublime hypocrisy that has become the hallmark of this most mendacious militarist administration, an Obama spokesman said the Peace Laureate opposed Aristide's return due to "deep concerns that President Aristide's return to Haiti in the closing days of the election could be destabilising," adding that the defender of freedom and democracy believes "that the Haitian people deserve the chance to choose their government through peaceful, free and fair elections."

Even from Team Obama, this is pretty rich. After blocking the largest political party from running, then forcing a run-off between two former supporters of vicious coups, Obama said he didn't want Haiti's democratically elected former leader to return to the homeland he was trundled from at gunpoint by Bushist goons in order to give the Haitian people "a free, fair election."

The result has been a record-low turnout and run-off so riddled with corruption that it may be weeks before one of America's hand-picked stooges is declared the winner. Meanwhile, Aristide did return -- Zuma told Obama plainly that Astride was a free man, he had a passport from his home country, and "I cannot hold him hostage." He did not interfere with the election, he endorsed no candidate. Most of his supporter simply boycotted the election, because of its blatant illegitimacy.

So this is what Barack Obama and his partner in imperialism, the globe-trotting Hillary Clinton, have been up to on the side while they are killing children in Libya and bluntly declaring to Congress that Obama will not acknowledge any restriction on his imperial will to wage war where whenever and wherever he damn well pleases. As John Caruso notes in a blistering post: more

There is No Cherobyl Solution For Fukushima

The option of simply encasing the thing in concrete, just isn't on the cards, in spite of what some talking heads bobble heads would have you believe. (Not crucial to the post but the inspiration for me to go in search of a suitable article.)

Some excellent links within the article.

When the Fukushima Meltdown Hits Groundwater
March 27, 2011
By Dr. Tom Burnett

Fukushima is going to dwarf Chernobyl The Japanese government has had a level 7 nuclear disaster going for almost a week but won’t admit it.

The disaster is occurring the opposite way than Chernobyl, which exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactions are getting worse. I suspect three nuclear piles are in meltdown and we will probably get some of it.

If reactor 3 is in meltdown, the concrete under the containment looks like lava. But Fukushima is not far off the water table. When that molten mass of self-sustaining nuclear material gets to the water table it won’t simply cool down. It will explode – not a nuclear explosion, but probably enough to involve the rest of the reactors and fuel rods at the facility.

Pouring concrete on a critical reactor makes no sense – it will simply explode and release more radioactive particulate matter. The concrete will melt and the problem will get worse. Chernobyl was different – a critical reactor exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactor cores are still melting down. The ONLY way to stop that is to detonate a ~10 kiloton fission device inside each reactor containment vessel and hope to vaporize the cores. That’s probably a bad solution.

A nuclear meltdown is a self-sustaining reaction. Nothing can stop it except stopping the reaction. And that would require a nuclear weapon. In fact, it would require one in each containment vessel to merely stop what is going on now. But it will be messy.

Fukushima was waiting to happen because of the placement of the emergency generators. If they had not all failed at once by being inundated by a tsunami, Fukushima would not have happened as it did – although it WOULD still have been a nuclear disaster. Every containment in the world is built to withstand a Magnitude 6.9 earthquake; the Japanese chose to ignore the fact that a similar earthquake had hit that same general area in 1896.

Anyway, here is the information that the US doesn’t seem to want released. And here is a chart that might help with perspective.

Making matters worse is the MOX in reactor 3. MOX is the street name for ‘mixed oxide fuel‘ which uses ~9% plutonium along with a uranium compound to fuel reactors. This is why it can be used.

The problem is that you don’t want to play with this stuff. A nuclear reactor means bring fissile material to a point at which it is hot enough to boil water (in a light-water reactor) and not enough to melt and go supercritical (China syndrome or a Chernobyl incident). You simply cannot let it get away from you because if it does, you can’t stop it.

The Japanese are still talking about days or weeks to clean this up. That’s not true. They cannot clean it up. And no one will live in that area again for dozens or maybe hundreds of years. hawiannewsdaily

Spiegel on Japan, on the Kill Team

Update: Japan's nuclear crisis threatens shipping lane transport Two minute clip BBC.

Part of an email alert containing a link to this story, (and more on the subject) The Good Boy and the 'Kill Team' a story by the way, I abandoned after the first page for reasons purely my own. But there was much other stuff of interest on the Spiegel website, some centred around Germany's, abstaining on, let's bomb Libya, and some centred around Germany's, or better put, Merkel's flip flop domestic nuke policy. The plebs, showing their displeasure recently, as is their wont, with both Merkel and with with nuclear energy, reflecting in the recent election results.

Staying with Germany's nuke issues, only this one somewhat different, and one that will have far reaching consequences, not for Germany, but for Japan, and it is such consequences that is one of the main talking points of this post, the turning away from German ports of nuclear contaminated ships and goods.

I suppose it's only when someone sits down and catalogues the problems facing Japan, its manufacturing industry, its tourism industry, food production and groundwater contamination, to name a few, it's only by doing this can we ask ourselves, can Japan ever recover at all, let alone aspire to recover to its pre-apocalypse status. The economy was a disaster before this lot came down on the country, I hardly think they will be trading themselves out of their financial woes.

Consumer Fears Could Add to Japan's Economic Challenges

How Dangerous Is Japan's Creeping Nuclear Disaster?

Yet life goes on, perhaps you do accept a certain degree of fatalism living in such a geological hotspot. There again, I don't suppose you have much choice in the matter.

Tokyo's Fatalism Courage in the Face of Disaster

I did read this, On the Trail of Holocaust Organizer Adolf Eichmann. Interesting enough I suppose, if only to remind us of the role the Catholic Church played in greasing, or playing the fat controller even, of, the wheels of the Nazi underground railway after the war.

Boeing in the shit.

A closer.

Message in a Bottle Turns Up after 24 Years

Over two decades ago, a German five-year-old threw a message in a bottle into the Baltic Sea from a ferry during a family holiday to Denmark. Now a 13-year-old Russian boy has found the missive, to the delight of the original letter-writer.

Thirteen-year-old Daniil Korotkikh was walking on a beach in Russia when he saw a bottle in the sand.

It turned out to be 24 years old, having been thrown by a young boy off a ship in the Baltic Sea nearly a quarter century ago, the Associated Press reported. And it had a message inside, written in German.

The letter said: "My name is Frank and I'm five years old. My dad and I are traveling on a ship to Denmark. If you find this letter, please write back to me, and I will write back to you."

Reporters tracked down the letter-writer Frank Uesbeck, now 29, from the address in Coesfeld, Germany which was on the letter. Uesbeck's parents still live in the town.

"At first I didn't believe it," Uebeck told the AP, explaining how he barely remembered the trip. "He'll definitely get another letter from me." The two long-distance correspondents have since met via the Internet, after Daniil wrote his own letter to Frank.

Daniil found the bottle on a beach on the Curonian Spit, on the Baltic Sea coast, part of which belongs to Russia's Kaliningrad region and part to Lithuania. The boy said he found it hard to believe that the bottle was so old and theorized it had been buried in the sand the whole time. "It would not have survived in the water all that time," he said.

When the two met online earlier this month, Uesbeck gave his new address to Daniil. He said he would write back when he gets a letter from the youngster. Spiegel

Dennis Kucinich on 'King' Obama: Watch Video

It's rather a pity Kucinich is so vertically challenged, he might have gone a lot farther politically had he not been, but he is one of the few Pols that I can take the time to listen to.

Rep. Kucinich: Lack of Congressional Approval Could Make Obama’s Libya Attack "Impeachable Offense"

Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio joins us to discuss why he thinks President Obama may have committed an "impeachable offense" by committing U.S. military forces to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya without congressional approval. "This president has assumed power that no president, not even President Bush, has assumed,” Kucinich says. “I think that we need to focus on this, not as a matter of whether we like President Obama or not, not as a matter of whether we are Democrats or not, but whether or not we understand the basic constitutional principles of the separation of power." Watch Democracy Now

Chernobyl One Million Dead. Fukushima? Video

Professor Christopher Busby, of the European Committee on Radiation Risks speaks very confidently on the issues facing Japan, and if I understand him correctly he is saying the north of Japan is finished, become effectively, an exclusion zone.

Anybody want to concur or disagree?




Same interviewer, different head, sometime later on.

Fukushima: Taking The Piss

In spades.

And I thought I could take the piss, but yer man here, he takes the biscuit n'all. I did read, but didn't publish his first instalment of extracting the urine, perhaps I should have done, a bit of humour, no matter how cynical does no harm in any situation. As equally, worrying about something does no good, even if it does mean great swathes, if not all of Japan becoming inhabitable. Where a litre of clean drinking water would become more prized than a litre of unleaded here in the jolly old United Kingdom.

Worry not about the very real threat, or should that be, the inevitability of millions of cancers, millions of birth defects and another step closer to the earth becoming a lifeless toxic ball spinning away in space. No let's have some humour with it, a bit of piss taking on a global scale.

How we all doing doing in Libya, have we managed to bomb that fucker's tent yet?

Fukushima fearmongers are stealing our Jetsons future

Hysteria now completely disconnected from reality
By Lewis Page

As the situation at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant slowly winds down, the salient facts remain the same as they have been throughout: nobody has suffered or will suffer any radiological health consequences. Economic damage and inconvenience resulting from the quake's effects on nuclear power have been significant, but tiny in comparison to all other human activities – the nuclear power plants in the stricken region have suffered less damage and caused less trouble to local residents than anything else that was there.

Despite this background, the details of which are now largely uncontested, hysteria continues to grip large sections of the news media and the internet.

The latest events at the plant itself:

Three workers who suffered noticeable but not dangerous radiation doses from standing ankle-deep in radioactive water – and possible minor burns equivalent to a mild case of sunburn – have been confirmed to have suffered no ill effects. Their "hospitalisation with radiation burns" was widely reported: the fact that they are – as was to be expected – perfectly fine was not.

More radioactive water has been found in a deep trench containing pipework and cabling adjacent to the No 2 reactor. This was measured as being noticeably radioactive four days ago, enough that a person could only be immersed in it for a quarter of an hour before sustaining a radiation dose sufficient to merit withdrawal from operations at the site – though not enough to cause any measurable health consequences.




Analysis indicates that some of the water in the trench by No 2 has been in contact with heat-damaged fuel in the reactor core. This is unsurprising as government and power-company officials had assessed as long ago as early last week that there had probably been damage to the No 2 suppression chamber, a doughnut-shaped vessel surrounding the central core vessel into which steam from the core has been released continually during the incident.

Normally water in the suppression chamber cools the steam and it is held there to allow short-lived isotopes to dissipate before being vented onward to atmosphere, so minimising radiation levels at the plant. But with the suppression chamber damaged as has long seemed likely, some steam from the core could have become water and exited below the building. The trench in question has 16m-deep shafts at each end and connects to a tunnel running below the No 2 complex.

Alternatively, radioactive steam from the suppression chamber could be condensing elsewhere in the building to trickle down and out and pool on top of otherwise harmless water already in the trench as a result of the tsunami, rain and snowfall since, massive pumping operations to cool spent-fuel pools etc. The trench, shafts etc contain many thousands of tonnes of water, only very small amounts of which could possibly have come via the core. Plant workers have built a sandbag barrier to prevent water spreading in the event of the trench overflowing.

Similar trenches and shafts exist at units 1 and 3, which also have damaged cores. Only tiny levels of radiation have been found at No 1, whose suppression chamber is thought to be intact; at No 3, thought likely to have suffered damage similar to that at No 2 (this too was announced last week), the trench is too clogged with tsunami debris to take readings.

As the situation has stabilised, workers at the plant have tried to minimise corrosion damage to the worst-hit reactors by switching from emergency seawater cooling of the cores and spent-fuel pools to the use of fresh water – in some cases delivered via the normal cooling equipment, restored to service with new electric power supplies to replace those wrecked by the tsunami. It had been hoped until recently that the expensive reactors might be restored to service in future.




Plant owner TEPCO has now decided to cut its losses, however, stating that it now considers that reactors 1 to 4 at the site will have to be written off: being near the end of their planned lives anyway, it makes no sense to spend much money on fixing them. The other two Daiichi reactors, Nos 5 and 6, were brought safely into a cold shutdown condition early on and TEPCO still expects to continue operations with these (as would be quite normal: both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island continued in operation as nuclear power stations following the incidents there).

The Japanese government, under tremendous pressure from the media-pumped hysteria over the issue, has said that it thinks the 5 and 6 reactors should also be shut down permanently. Rumours that the government might nationalise TEPCO are circulating widely, though denied both by the company and the state. TEPCO's 11 other reactors seem certain to continue in service, as will the 40-odd owned by other Japanese power companies. The company seems to be coping well with the temporary loss of many of its power stations: it cancelled planned rolling blackouts today and has announced that tomorrow's planned blackouts will not take place either. more

Obama on Libya: George W. Bush 2.0

Talking of Bush (previous post) but not of Libya, because this is as near as I am going go on reporting Libya, sheer bloody hypocrisy having the effect it does on me. Nor for that matter do I want to be in on the ground floor wasting words in describing America's latest folly and clusterfuck in the making, the United States humanitarian intervention in Libya. An intervention I add for which there can only be one consequence; tears, tears by the bucketful. Inevitable tears from the west upon discovering their master-plan for Libya, just like Bush's plan for Iraq, was no plan at all. And then Arab tears. tears of hurt of pain of loss, perhaps a few short lived tears of joy before being replaced by tears of anger when the realisation dawns just how much they have been had over by America and it's failed great black hope, the disastrous Barrack Obama.

There might even be a tear for the old tyrant, if they have time to shed one that is, as every disgruntled Arab from one end of the Mediterranean to the other aligns themselves against Libya's new best friend, the tyrannical United States of America.

Obama on Libya: George W. Bush 2.0
By Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis

His lines may be better delivered, but Barack Obama is sounding – and acting – more like the heir to George W. Bush than the change-maker sold to the public in his award-winning ad campaign. Indeed, when not sending billions of dollars to repressive governments across the globe, the great liberal hope is authorizing deadly drone strikes and military campaigns in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and now, in his most pseudo-righteous war yet, Libya.

Strutting out to a podium before an audience of uniformed military personnel – wonder where he got that idea from – a confident, some would say cocky, American president offered a fierce albeit belated speech justifying another preemptive war against a country that posed no threat to the United States. And if you closed your eyes, you could almost hear that faux-Texas drawl.

“As Commander-in-Chief, I have no greater responsibility than keeping this country safe,” the president declared, adopting his predecessor’s favorite title for himself. “I’ve made it clear that I will never hesitate to use our military swiftly, decisively, and unilaterally when necessary to defend our people, our homeland, our allies and our core interests.”

Put another way, President Obama says he will only start a war – without consulting Congress, much less the public – when it is absolutely necessary for defending the “homeland” or for, you know, whatever he deems an “interest.”

Enter Muammar Gaddafi, a caricature of a tyrant who the Obama administration just a matter of weeks ago was looking to sell $77 million in weapons, including more than 50 armored troop carriers. Back then – mid-April – Gaddafi was a thuggish but reliable client in his old age. And he happened to rule over a country that has the largest oil reserves in Africa.

Funny how friendship works.

But a few short weeks ago, Gaddafi became unreliable – a public relations nightmare – when he started using the weapons he purchased from his erstwhile allies against his own people. Like Saddam Hussein before him, he became a liability.

So now Obama believes Gaddafi to be a “tyrant” who has lost his “legitimacy” – as if there was anything “legitimate” about his previous 42 years of dictatorial rule. On Monday, the president argued war was necessary to prevent Gaddafi from massacring rebel forces and their supporters in Benghazi. Such a massacre “would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world,” said the war president. “I refused to let that happen.”

I – me – the imperial president. Cue the commander-in-chief landing on an aircraft carrier.
But if the threat of a massacre is what spurs President Obama to action, what are we to make of his reaction to Israel’s massacre of more than 1,400 Palestinians during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, or what Amnesty International calls “22 days of death and destruction?” Giving Israel an additional $30 billion in American weapons is a rather curious response, no?
And what about the hundreds of civilians killed by drone attacks in Pakistan since Obama took office – as many as 1,850 according to the New America Foundation? In early March, the very administration cloaking its new war in moralizing rhetoric carried out a massacre of 40 Pakistani civilians – a massacre the president who authorized the attack couldn’t even be bothered to comment on.

Right now, the Obama administration is actively supporting brutal regimes in Yemen, Iraq and Bahrain – to name a few – where protest movements are being violently suppressed on the American taxpayers’ dime. And the Obama administration is selling $60 billion in weapons to the Saudis, who not only oppress their own dissidents but recently occupied neighboring Bahrain and violently cracked down on peaceful protesters there with the U.S.’s stamp of approval.

So if one thing’s clear, it’s that the U.S. government is fine with tyranny – when it’s “pro-American” (business). Fancy rhetoric aside, there is no “freedom agenda.”

Speaking to reporters this week, Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough conceded as much, saying that the White House doesn’t “make decisions about questions like intervention based on consistency or precedent.” Rather, “We make them based on how we can best advance our interests in the region.”

And as history professor and war supporter Juan Cole helpfully notes, the rebels control significant swaths of oil-rich territory and have taken “key oil towns” thanks to the U.S.-led bombing campaign – of 200 cruise missiles fired so far, 193 have been fired from American warships. They are also on the verge of taking 80 percent of the Buraiqa Basin, writes Cole, which “contains much of Libya’s oil wealth.”

Bingo: We just found “our interests.” And unsurprisingly, they don’t involve protecting innocent people from being killed so much as they do protecting the natural resource on top of which they’re dying – and then having the freshly liberated locals pick up the tab for American contractors to rebuild everything American missiles destroyed.

Major General Smedley Butler had it right: war is a racket.

But even assuming Obama has the best of intentions – with which the road to hell is paved, mind you – U.S. intervention in Libya is more likely to do harm than good. Besides the inevitable “collateral damage,” meaning widowed mothers and orphaned children, war sets off an unpredictable chain reaction of evil – evil that no side has a monopoly over
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