Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune slammed the department's review as “an insult to anyone who expects government to work for the interests of the American people.”
Phi Beta Iota: Neither the Department of State, nor any other branch of government nor even the environmentalists themselves, are doing holistic analytics. At root this project is wrong for two reasons: it uses water we cannot afford to waste to flush the tar, and it creates a third rate oil follow-on ecology–doing the wrong thing writer as Russell Ackoff would say. The US Government lacks the ability to do holistic analytics, and therefore it is incapable of rendering sound decisions in a complex world.
This PressTV bit with me was recorded at 2:30 pm New York time yesterday (22 Aug 2011). At that time, I questioned the veracity of the claimed capture of Gadaffi's sons and of rebel control of the city of Tripoli. It turns out I was right.
No, I don't have a crystal ball – just good contacts on the ground who don't lie or hold their tongues when they see horrible wrong being done. NATO – that's Obama to the apologists – has done everything to keep this information from you, but the truth will out!
Phi Beta Iota: US Information Operations (IO) includes Pyschological Operations (PSYOP, now under a new name, same mindset, which is to deceive rather than to promulgate the truth). It has improved since its signal success in sending Iraqi troops home rather than having to deal with their surrender. What we are seeing in relation to Libya, apart from the impeachable crimes of pilots, generals, Congress, and the White House, is a major IO/PSYOP campaign that is driven by Wall Street and Big Oil, not by the public interest. Interestingly, this is also the first time that the truth is being crowd-sourced in a moderately effective manner, suggesting that in the future any IO/PSYOP campaign that is less than truthful will be outed in quick time.
Phi Beta Iota: The respective press–those trapped in a hotel in Tripoli and those embedded with the rebels–are seeing only what they are allowed to see. Apart from Patrick Meier, Arno Reuser and a few others, no one is actually putting together “ground truth” based on widely scatted Twitter and other forms of communication. The West sees Libya as oil, water, and gold. The Africa Union has failed to see the urgency of protecting its interest in all three.
A sobering Japanese bookend to the stunning Sprey-Cockburn report which documented Fukushima's increased infant death rates in some cities in the United States (distributed on 16 Aug). Yet another nail in the claim that we can evolve a safe carbon-free economy in the near term. Given the low power density of green technologies, like wind and solar, going carbon-free or moving away from fire — i.e., the invention that launched millions of years human cultural evolution — in the next 30-100 years necessarily involves a huge expansion in nuclear power, because is the only high power-density, non-carbon solution available over the foreseeable future).
Japanese doctors warn of public health problems caused by Fukushima radiation.
by Dahr Jamail
Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from Fukushima's heavily damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant.
“How much radioactive materials have been released from the plant?” asked Dr Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and Director of the University of Tokyo's Radioisotope Centre, in a July 27 speech to the Committee of Health, Labour and Welfare at Japan's House of Representatives.
Read more….
Phi Beta Iota: We do not agree with Brother Spinney's conclusion. Infinite free energy is available now, particularly in countries such as Chile where a wide variety of solar, geo-thermal, and oceanic forms can be deployed. We have lacked both political will and scientific imagination, as well as the essential focus on distributed self-sufficiency. The “central” generation paradigm is corrupt and will not scale.
The Tsunami or the Earthquake Preceding the Tsunami?????
Below is another pathbreaking report in Counterpunch on the Fukushima question. Fukushima may be off the front pages, but the catastrophe is still generating serious questions with profound ramifications. In a few days, I will forward another blaster will showing how the some of these ramifications this catastrophe reaching into the good ole USA. In the meantime, I urge you to read this report.
Chuck Spinney
Nice, France
The Fukushima Daiichi Reactors Were in Meltdown After the Earthquake, But Before the Tsnumami Hit
It is one of the mysteries of Japan’s ongoing nuclear crisis: How much damage did the March 11 earthquake do to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors before the tsunami hit? The stakes are high: If the quake structurally compromised the plant and the safety of its nuclear fuel, then every other similar reactor in Japan will have to be reviewed and possibly shut down. With virtually all of Japan’s 54 reactors either offline (35) or scheduled for shutdown by next April, the issue of structural safety looms over the decision to restart every one in the months and years after.
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Problems with the fractured, deteriorating, poorly repaired pipes and the cooling system had been pointed out for years. In 2002, whistleblower allegations that TEPCO had deliberately falsified safety records came to light and the company was forced to shut down all of its reactors and inspect them, including the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant. Sugaoka Kei, a General Electric on-site inspector first notified Japan’s nuclear watchdog, Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) in June of 2000. The government of Japan took two years to address the problem, then colluded in covering it up — and gave the name of the whistleblower to TEPCO.
It is now widely accepted – and lamented — that US President Barack Obama failed dismally in attempting to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Defeated by Israel’s hard-line Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, and by Israel’s friends in the U.S. — lobbyists, Congressmen and women, neo-conservatives, Christian Zionists, and assorted Arab-haters both inside and outside the Administration — the President threw in the towel.
What is less well understood is that Obama was also defeated in another major area of foreign policy – relations with Iran. When he came to office he vowed to ‘engage’ with the Islamic Republic, but this admirable objective was soon supplanted by a policy of threats, sanctions and intimidation aimed at isolating Iran, subverting its economy and overthrowing its regime.
Israel and its friends led the campaign against Iran, demonizing it as a threat to all mankind, and forcing the United States to follow suit. Israel has repeatedly, and very publicly, threatened to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities, and has done its best to drag the U.S. into war against it, in much the same way as pro-Israeli neo-conservatives – such as Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith at the Pentagon — manipulated intelligence to push America into war against Iraq in 2003, with catastrophic consequences for the United States.
Phi Beta Iota: Brazil and Turkey are depicted as adults, the US as a retarded child misguided by Israel. There is no discernible difference between the Bush-Cheney Administrations and the Obama-Biden Administration with respect to foreign policy and national security, with one signal exception: the National Security Advisor is a Goldman Sachs lobbyist.
It was seen as one of the most distressing effects of climate change ever recorded: polar bears dying of exhaustion after being stranded between melting patches of Arctic sea ice.
But now the government scientist who first warned of the threat to polar bears in a warming Arctic has been suspended and his work put under official investigation for possible scientific misconduct.
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Some question why Monnett, employed by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, has been suspended at this moment. The Obama administration has been accused of hounding the scientist so it can open up the fragile region to drilling by Shell and other big oil companies.
