A Guide to Legal Marijuana Use In Seattle, by Seattle P.D.

Marijwhatnow? A Guide to Legal Marijuana Use In Seattle

Written by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee 

The people have spoken. Voters have passed Initiative 502 and beginning December 6^th, it is not a violation of state law for adults over 21 years old to possess up to an ounce of marijuana (or 16 ounces of solid marijuana-infused product, like cookies, or 72 ounces of infused liquid, like oil) for personal use.  The initiative establishes a one-year period for the state to develop rules and a licensing system for the marijuana production and sale.

Marijuana has existed in a grey area in Seattle for some time now. Despite a longstanding national prohibition on marijuana, minor marijuana possession has been the lowest enforcement priority for the Seattle Police Department since Seattle voters passed Initiative 75 in 2003. Officers don’t like grey areas in the law. I-502 now gives them more clarity.

Marijuana legalization creates some challenges for the Seattle Police Department, but SPD is already working to respond to these issues head on, by doing things like reviewing SPD’s hiring practices for police officers to address now-legal marijuana usage by prospective officers, as well as current employees.

While I-502 has decriminalized marijuana possession in Washington, the new state law does not change federal law, which classifies marijuana as a Schedule I narcotic. All Seattle Police officers have taken an oath to uphold not only state law, but federal law as well. However, SPD officers will follow state law, and will no longer make arrests for marijuana possession as defined under I-502.

The Seattle Police Department and Mayor Mike McGinn have already begun working with state officials to navigate this conflict, and follow the direction of Washington voters to legalize marijuana.

In the meantime, the Seattle Police Department will continue to enforce laws against unlicensed sale or production of marijuana, and regulations against driving under the influence of marijuana, which remain illegal.

TL;DR?

Here’s a practical guide for what the Seattle Police Department believes I-502 means for you, beginning December 6^th, based on the department’s current understanding of the initiative  Please keep in mind that this is all subject to ongoing state and local review, and that it describes the view of the Seattle Police Department only. All marijuana possession and sale remains illegal under federal law, and Seattle Police cannot predict or control the enforcement activities of federal authorities.

Can I legally carry around an ounce of marijuana?

According to the recently passed initiative, beginning December 6^th, adults over the age of 21 will be able to carry up to an ounce of marijuana for personal use. Please note that the initiative says it “is unlawful to open a package containing marijuana…in view of the general public,” so there’s that. Also, you probably shouldn’t bring pot with you to the federal courthouse (or any other federal property).

Well, where can I legally buy pot, then?

The Washington State Liquor Control Board is working to establish guidelines for the sale and distribution of marijuana. The WSLCB has until December 1, 2013 to finalize those rules. In the meantime, production and distribution of non-medical marijuana remains illegal.

Does I-502 affect current medical marijuana laws?

No, medical marijuana laws in Washington remain the same as they were before I-502 passed.

Can I grow marijuana in my home and sell it to my friends, family, and co-workers?

Not right now. In the future, under state law, you may be able to get a license to grow or sell marijuana.

Can I smoke pot outside my home? Like at a park, magic show, or the Bite of Seattle?

Much like having an open container of alcohol in public, doing so could result in a civil infraction—like a ticket—but not arrest. You can certainly use marijuana in the privacy of your own home. Additionally, if smoking a cigarette isn’t allowed where you are (say, inside an apartment building or flammable chemical factory), smoking marijuana isn’t allowed there either.

Will police officers be able to smoke marijuana?

As of right now, no. This is still a very complicated issue.

If I apply for a job at the Seattle Police Department, will past (or current) marijuana use be held against me? The current standard for applicants is that they have not used marijuana in the previous three years. In light of I-502, the department will consult with the City Attorney and the State Attorney General to see if and how that standard may be revised.

What happens if I get pulled over and an officer thinks I’ve been smoking pot?

If an officer believes you’re driving under the influence of anything, they will conduct a field sobriety test and may consult with a drug recognition expert. If officers establish probable cause, they will bring you to a precinct and ask your permission to draw your blood for testing. If officers have reason to believe you’re under the influence of something, they can get a warrant for a blood draw from a judge. If you’re in a serious accident, then a blood draw will be mandatory.

What happens if I get pulled over and I’m sober, but an officer or his K9 buddy smells the ounce of Super Skunk I’ve got in my trunk?

Under state law, officers have to develop probable cause to search a closed or locked container. Each case stands on its own, but the smell of pot alone will not be reason to search a vehicle. If officers have information that you’re trafficking, producing or delivering marijuana in violation of state law, they can get a warrant to search your vehicle.

SPD seized a bunch of my marijuana before I-502 passed. Can I have it back?

No.

Will SPD assist federal law enforcement in investigations of marijuana users or marijuana-related businesses, that are allowed under I-502?

No. Officers and detectives will not participate in an investigation of anything that’s not prohibited by state law.

December 6^th seems like a really long ways away. What happens if I get caught with marijuana before then?   Hold your breath. Your case will be processed under current state law. However, there is already a city ordinance making marijuana enforcement the lowest law enforcement priority.

I’m under 21. What happens if I get caught smoking pot?

It’s a violation of state law. It may referred to prosecutors, just like if you were a minor in possession of alcohol.

How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It–(334 pages of help when there is none)

How_To_Survive_The_World_As_We_Know_It

Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times
James Wesley, Rawles
a  p lu m e  b o o k

Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
Publisher’s Note xv
1 The Survival Mind-set for Living in Uncertain
Times 3
2 Priorities: Your List of Lists 21
3 The Survival Retreat 38
4 Water: The Key Resource 65
5 The Deep Larder: Your Family’s Food Storage 78
6 Fuel and Home Power 108
7 Gardens and Livestock 128
8 Medical Supplies and Training 148

9 Communications and Monitoring 190
10 Home Security and Self-Defense 202
11 Firearms for Self-Sufficiency and Self-Defense 223
12 G.O.O.D. Vehicles and the Dreaded Trip Outta
Dodge 247
13 Investing, Barter, and Home-Based Businesses 261
14 It Comes Down to You 287
Appendix A: Glossary 291
Appendix B: Books and Online Resources 299
Appendix C: Protecting Your Family from an
Influenza Pandemic 300
Index 309

Survivalist Wisdom–Voices from the Hurricane Sandy Aftermath

[Prepare for the worst, pray that you never need it.  Pray even harder if you do need it, for protection from those whose only survival plan has been to take what they needed.]

Six Letters Re: Hurricane Sandy After Action Reports

SurvivalBlog.com

James,
I’m located in central New Jersey not far from the Delaware River. In the days prior to the hurricane hitting, everyone packed the supermarkets, warehouse clubs and home improvement stores to stock up.

At the home improvement stores, the people who had best luck getting generators were those who purchased them online and selected in-store pickup. There were lines of people 100+ deep from the front of the store to the back waiting for new shipments of generators to arrive. The only people who were guaranteed anything were those who had already purchased and paid online.

For those lucky enough to get a generator, they’d have a hard time fueling it if they didn’t already have gas cans and gas stored at home. The shelves were cleared of gas cans days before the storm hit.

The warehouse club that we are members of sold out of water the day before the storm hit. They normally have pallets of water on shelves up to the ceiling along the length of an entire aisle. That aisle was completely bare. They also sold out of most fruits/and vegetables that could store for a little without power. The displays that normally hold bananas and apples were bare.

Flashlights and D batteries were gone days before the storm too. The only ones that were left were plug-in rechargeable flashlights that would be of little use after the first discharge in a power outage.

My sister had luck finding a huge display of batteries at a big chain baby store. Most people went straight to the supermarkets and home improvement stores, not thinking that many other types of stores also kept basic supplies.

The winds really started to pick up Monday afternoon. There wasn’t much rain, even at the height of the storm, but the winds were very strong. Our house, which is only 4 years old, shuddered a couple of times in the highest gusts. We didn’t sustain any physical damage to the house, but a couple of small trees tilted over but didn’t uproot or break. Some sections of vinyl fencing in our neighborhood blew out and shattered from the force of the wind.

Sections of our neighborhood started to lose power around 6 PM not long after the hurricane made landfall. Street lights were out and the power to houses across the street were out. From our upstairs windows, we watched the sky glow blue and pink in all directions as transformers blew. Every minute or so another one would blow.

Finally, around 8:30 PM, we watched a transformer light the sky up for about 30 seconds. When it finally darkened, we and the rest of our neighborhood were out of power.

I had filled our spare refrigerator in our garage with cases of water and the spare freezer with bags of ice. I also took every empty plastic jug and bottle out of our recycling bins and filled them 3/4 of the way with water and froze them in our main/spare freezers. Every inch of freezer space that wasn’t packed with food was packed with an ice bottle.

I knew our refrigerator wouldn’t keep food cold long, so we immediately transferred our most critical food (milk for the kids, etc.) into ice filled coolers. The main freezer with most of our frozen food and frozen water bottles was never opened. It stayed perfectly cold until the power came back on, and most of the ice bottles had barely started to thaw. The food in our ice-filled coolers also was fine. We did sacrifice non-critical food that we didn’t have space for in the coolers to the garbage bin.

We lit the house with long-lasting led lanterns that definitely did the trick. We hunkered around an old battery power radio to keep up with storm news, and gave our two-year old son a spare lantern to play with, which kept him happy. With no power and little news expected until morning, we turned in early (for us) at around 10 PM.

Our furnace was out and we don’t have a fireplace, so the temperature dropped to the low 60s in our house overnight. It was a little chilly, but we were comfortable enough. We were definitely lucky it wasn’t colder outside.

By the morning the storm had passed and a family that we are very close friends with down the street had their generator running. We and several of our friends congregated there for the day. They had enough power for their refrigerator, several lights, a tv and cable box, and a power strip for charging phones.

Although the power was out, the cable stayed on until around noon so we were able to see the first images of storm damage. After the cable went out, most of us switched to our web-enabled smartphones and social media to stay informed and reach out to friends.

We grilled outside for lunch and dinner, with everyone pitching in food that would go bad if unused. Everyone with spare gas stored was prepared to pitch in whatever they had until the power came back on to keep the generator running. We brought over 10 gallons that wasn’t needed.

Cell phone service was spotty. People who were subscribers of one the two major cell providers in our area had no problem making/receiving calls and surfing the web. Subscribers of the other major service had a signal, but couldn’t make calls and their data service only worked intermittently.

The day after the storm, most traffic lights remained out. All gas stations and most stores were closed. One home improvement store opened under emergency power. They only let a limited number of people into the front part of the store where they had set up displays with their remaining emergency supplies (flashlights, batteries, power cords, and a new supply of gas cans). They surprisingly even accepted credit cards. Some other stores we checked out only accepted cash if they were open at all.

24 hours after the power went out, it came back on for most of our neighborhood. We’re definitely lucky since of the 2/3 of our state that was without power, only about 15-20% of homes had been restored when we were reconnected.

It was an interesting experience for a day, but something that none of us would have been happy to have continue. We all realized, individually and as a group, what things we were missing that could have made us more comfortable.

Although we were lucky that our part of the state suffered little more than downed trees and power lines, New Jersey is very small so we all have friends in the hardest hit parts of the Jersey Shore and we are very familiar with the popular vacation spots that have been destroyed.

I’ve been in contact with friends who live just blocks from the beach who have raised homes and still have standing water lapping at their front doors. A few other friends live in beach neighborhoods that have essentially become islands with bridges, highways and other access roads out of service and surrounded by water. Others left some of the very hardest hit communities before the storm hit and don’t know if their homes are still standing.

Some neighborhoods devastated by storm surge and flooding are now burning. Along some of the barrier islands, emergency services from the mainland are cut off and fires will likely be left to burn themselves out. Some entire towns are expected to burn.

There are a lot of people who have lost everything and many who are still in harm’s way. Keep them in your prayers. Thanks, – Brad S.

 

James,
I have family from Pennsylvania to Maine.  I tried to encourage my family and cousins who I knew would be affected by Sandy to visit me in the mountains of New England, but they were all so sure that they could survive the storm.

Only one family had a generator.  It wasn’t wired into the house, so plenty of extension cords are in use there.  The others had nothing at all setup.  So I briefed them on filling the tub, freezing extra containers for ice, etc.  And all were briefed on staying put during and after the storm.

Of course, some don’t listen so well.  While all survived in some fashion, here is the latest and worse from my cousin on Long Island:

“Pumping out water all day.
We had absolutely not a drop of [drinking] water. Storm surge at 830 p.m. and we were seeing it force its way in at the rate of a foot a minute!! I have never witnessed anything like that in my life!
Scary stuff!!!

We tried to hold it back just no way hydraulic pressure was just too much.
Total 10 feet of water. We jumped ship when it got to 6 feet. Then couldn’t get to [deleted for OPSEC]‘s house… Every path home and on every road trees were down, we didn’t plan for that. We slept at a friend’s aunt’s house. She welcomed us (dog and all) with open arms and we are total strangers. The walls all cracked assuming will be a total loss.

We are going to call it quits soon will be back at it again tomorrow. No [phone] service so can’t call our insurance company. Friends are coming from all over to help. No big deal–It is just a material asset. Insurance hopefully covers hurricanes. We are fortunate, as it could’ve been much worse.”

He was right.  They were fortunate.  They could have drowned leaving during the night.  They could have been injured trying to leave that location to their ‘safe’ house.

I suspect that the next time they will evacuate in a timely fashion.  I doubt that they will ever disparage a prepared mindset again.

We can’t save folks from themselves.

I will head into New York and New Jersey when possible to reach them with support.  I expect to have to wait until after this coming Tuesday.

Thank you for your SurvivalBlog site! Regards, – Mike A.

 

Good Morning to You!
Our area of the East coast was spared the worst brunt of the storm.  Massive snowfalls to our west, and massive flooding to the east.  We were very fortunate.

We live on top of a hill, and by Monday morning, we had water filling our basement.  I went outside with middle son, and we found a deep hole filled with water next to the foundation of our house.  We dug a ditch from the edge of the hole far, far away from the edge of the hole and down the hill well past the fall line.  I would estimate we dug at least 30 feet of mud.  While I dug, my son took the shovels of dirt that I pulled out of the ground and put it back into the hole by the foundation.  Once we were finished, we moved the drainage pipe from the gutters so that it, too, fed into the ditch we had dug away from the house.  10 more inches of rain fell over the next 24 hours, but no more of it ran into our basement.

I understand now what you mean when you say you need to be physically fit!  I’m a 40 something mother of three, and my 17 year old son and I put in a good two hours worth of physical work in the driving rain, diverting water away from the house.  Maybe insurance would have covered the damage if we hadn’t done the work, but I prefer the effort of digging a ditch in the rain to the effort of clearing a basement of water and carpets and furniture.  Best two hours worth of work I’ve ever done, and our house is still in one piece!

Besides the obvious water and wind damage around here, there is one thing that stuck out more and more:  The number of people killed by falling trees.  Tall trees close to the house really do need to be trimmed back so that damage is lessened if a tree or limb falls on a house.  One gentleman told the story of how he and his father had a conversation on Saturday about how they needed to trim or cut down the tree next to the house.  Then on Monday, his father was killed instantly when the tree fell on the house during high winds.

Peace to you all. – B.L.W.

 

James,
The report from Delaware. With the exception of flood prone and some beach front areas we dodged the bullet.

It was an excellent exercise for our small family. The preparation for with this sort of an event turns on do you stay or leave. Different priorities for equipment supplies and staging following from each of those two choices. However what this storm brought home to us (since we have a shelter in place default ) is that within the shelter in place paradigm is,”suppose that tree falls on your house and you must leave in a hurry anyway’ sub-plan. Since for us in our location Sandy was forecast to be a wind event, this latter sub-plan rose up from the back burner rather forcefully.

Now, we had to pull out and check the go bags (not seen since last year’s windy scare) marshal water, food rations, range bags (did I restock those mags after the last week) , document case, comms and other take-with items by the door while preparing to deal with prolonged electrical outage (potentially weeks) therefore check generator, water reserves, fuel, etc etc..

I found that while our shelter in place preps and SOP were fairly well in hand, the “Yikes, we got-a-go now” end was pretty confused. Part of the reason for this is that we really need to have more duplicate gear stashed in the “Go now” configuration, and it was clear from this go round that we ain’t there yet. I also know as I write this that I have all sorts of essential items stowed carefully labeled clearly that I will want to toss in the vehicle, but it will take me days to think through the inventory. Not something to be doing as water is cascading through a rent in the building.

So I tell you to tell me, “build the list now while it is still fresh.”

One side note: We were “powerless” for only 8 hours, but as a result I am looking to replace my noisy old Generac (such a headache! The thing just roars. I must be getting old) with newer quieter Yamaha or Honda digital. While researching I found this very useful worksheet for calculating loads on the Yamaha web site.

Blessings… Pray for the folks in New York City, Connecticut and New Jersey…. They have a long way to come back. – Dollardog

 

JWR:
As per your request for info out of the New York City area: Having grown up in Florida, I kind of knew what to expect. Needless to say, I was well provisioned and my powder, so to speak, was high and dry and at the ready well in advance of Sandy’s final approach…

My wife and I rode out the storm in our “Brooklyn Bunker,” a fourth-floor apartment in a solid pre-war building. We spent a long night watching for the flashes of transformers exploding in the wind, and darkness encroaching as lights went out in the homes all around us. Luckily, the lights managed to stay on in our neighborhood, and we didn’t lose power once. After the storm passed, we emerged to discover no major damage, some trees down on cars and roofs, limited cell phone service, but that’s about it…

The same can’t be said for lower Manhattan and parts of Staten Island, though. The six-foot security fence around some rental property I own there came down, right into my truck. A violent storm surge turned most of the coastal communities on the island into what looks like a war zone, with the National Guard deployed to keep order. No working street lights, no stores open, no gas. People are attempting to drive into northern New Jersey to find gas stations that have power, with little luck. Con Edison now says power will be out to 60% of the island for more than a week. My tenants are in the dark with no heat…

Looking across the East River into Lower Manhattan at night, I am reminded of my time as a journalist in New Orleans during Katrina, where I witnessed another entire American city abandoned, darkened, and brought to its knees by Mother Nature (combined with a healthy dose of human stupidity). The entire subway system here is paralyzed, and along with it commerce, and most of the city’s inhabitants. There are already some rumblings on blogs and other social media platforms about the “lack of government response,” like this one here, but for the most part, people have remained unusually calm and accommodating to each other, at least for New Yorkers.

As with Katrina, Sandy reminded me of just how fragile the veneer of civilization that most most city-dwellers often take for granted truly is. During the final 24 hours leading up to Sandy’s arrival, lines at every major grocery store in Brooklyn and Manhattan were several blocks long, with hours-long wait times just to enter the stores and clerks taking small groups of people in to shop, just a few at a time.

Given the mentality of the average city-dweller, the run on grocery stores was to be expected. Perhaps more importantly for the SurvivalBlog readership at large, what’s transpired here over the past 48 hours is nothing short of an amazing exercise in the efficacy of state control circa 2012 (much better execution than what I witnessed during Katrina). I am at once somewhat pleasantly surprised yet shockingly dismayed by just how quickly the authorities were able to shut down and subdue the country’s biggest metropolis. Within a few hours, they were able to – successfully – deploy several thousand National Guard troops, shut down the country’s biggest subway system, 15 major bridges and tunnels, three major airports, and cut power to eight square miles of a world-class city…all with nary a whimper nor major objection from the populace.

New Yorkers in three major boroughs were – and in the case of Lower Manhattan, still are – effectively cut off from the outside world. Moving forward, most SurvivalBlog readers like myself who either choose or are forced to reside in cities should perhaps (re)consider their long term plans and preparations given the recent tactics on display here in NYC.

Thanks and best, – KTC in NYC

 

Dear Jim:
Sheeple no more here. Sandy came and went. Our area is Bucks County about an hour north of Philadelphia. We border the Delaware River. Power here went out early and and only came on today.

I think we weathered it well. I was one of the last minute “run to the store” folks. Bought a gallon of milk. Everything else was in place. As soon as the power went out, I fired up our generator and hunkered down for the 70 MPH winds.

We did lose a couple of shingles and some aluminum trim on the house. Those unprepared suffered flooded basements, many areas will not have power for a week or more. Lots of trees down, snapped telephone poles, sink holes in the road. The emergency services were running 24 hours for two days. Constant sirens all over the place.

Where did I come up short? I never got around to getting my ham radio license or programming my Baofeng UV-5R. It would have come in handy to keep in touch with the others in my group. I have some Uniden walkies and they proved worthless.

At the end of the storm my wife she thanked me for being prepared. Up until this happened she kind of went alone with my “hobby”. Always a little smile on her face. It’s different now.

What I need to do:

• Get my ham license.
• Run a dedicated electrical line to the crucial items in the house. Pumps, freezer, frig, security lights.
• Replace my burned out chainsaw.
• Read “How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It” for the 12th time and update my (your) lists of lists.

Take care and God Bless, – M.

Colorado, Washington and Oregon to vote on legalizing marijuana

By Diana Washington Valdez \ El Paso Times

According to the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMC), the outcome of marijuana legalization propositions in Colorado, Washington and Oregon could have a negative impact on Mexican $11 billion drug-trafficking trade. (Times file photo)

While the United States is focused on the Nov. 6 presidential election, the Mexican drug cartels may be more worried about marijuana ballot measures in three states that could cut deeply into their profits if passed.

According to the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMC), the outcome of marijuana legalization propositions in Colorado, Washington and Oregon could affect the $11 billion Mexican drug trade.

“It would pose the most important structural shock to drug-trafficking in a generation, since the massive arrival of cocaine in the late eighties,” said the 47-page report released Wednesday. “The Sinaloa drug cartel would be the most affected, it could lose up to 50 percent of its income. The Caballeros Templarios (Knights

Reporter: Diana Washington Valdez

Templar cartel), would also be affected, and the rest would also see moderate losses.”

The Mexican states that would be most affected if all or any of the three U.S. states vote to legalize marijuana are Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa, and possibly Michoacan, Guerrero and Oaxaca.

Drug kingpin Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán is the current leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel, which waged a brutal four-year war against rivals of the Carrillo Fuentes (Juárez) drug cartel that left more than 11,000 people dead.

The two groups, known smugglers of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine, battled each other for control of the Chihuahua-Texas-New Mexico border-smuggling routes.

The Mexican drug cartel wars that began

in 2007 during President Felipe Calderón’s term, killed thousands more throughout Mexico.

On Nov. 6, residents in the three U.S. states will vote on statewide ballot measures related to the possession, production, distribution and sale of marijuana:

• Colorado: Supporters are calling for Amendment 64 to pass so that the state can “regulate marijuana like alcohol.”

New Mexico and 16 other states and the District of Colombia already allow the limited use of marijuana for medical purposes only.

NORML, a national organization that advocates for the legalization of marijuana, is in favor of the ballot measures. The organization’s tracking data indicate that the measure in Washington state has the best chances of passing, said Allen St. Pierre, NORML executive director in Washington, D.C.

“If it passes, it could kick up the discussion over legalizing marijuana into an entirely new gear,” St. Pierre said. “As we’ve seen in the past, if it passes, we can probably also expect the federal government to seek an

BORDER CAFE Border issues blog by Diana Washington Valdez.

injunction, probably against retail sales.

“The federal government, however, cannot force a state to change any of its laws that reduce or eliminate state penalties for possessing marijuana. In Alaska, for example, marijuana is illegal, but there is zero (state) penalties for possessing it.”

St. Pierre agrees with the IMC report that legalization in the United States would affect Mexican drug cartels.

“Call it the Corona beer effect, where you make it, tax it, regulate it and import it,” St. Pierre said. “Legalization would lead to stabilization of our border with Mexico, and put an end to laws that create criminal profits and syndications.”

This year, Uruguay became the first country in the Americas to start taking steps to legalize marijuana.

The IMC report is titled “If Our Neighbors Legalize.” Among other things, the report said that 40 to 70 percent of the marijuana now consumed in the United States is imported (smuggled) from Mexico. The IMC is a nonprofit think tank, based in Mexico City, that conducts research on a variety of topics.

According to the report, the United States has about 30 million marijuana users who spend from $500 to $1,000 on pot each year.

In addition to Mexican drug-traffickers, television specials have highlighted U.S. local growers that produce and sell marijuana clandestinely, including some in California.

Experts estimate that Mexican drug dealers generate $11 billion to $12 billion in marijuana sales each year, which makes up half their total take for trafficking all illegal drugs.

No one was available Wednesday for comment at the White House Office. The Drug Enforcement Administration, the primary drug enforcement agency of the federal government, maintains on its website its position against the legalization of marijuana.

The IMC report also said Mexican drug traffickers would lose business to U.S. producers who could grow and distribute pot to consumers throughout the United States at a lower cost than smugglers do now.

Mexico’s drug dealers have to pay laborers to grow the marijuana, bribe police and other officials to protect their product, transport the product, smuggle it across the border, and distribute it to users.

In Mexico, it is not against the law to possess small amounts of marijuana for personal use. However, the government does not tax or regulate marijuana production or sales, and trafficking is still a violation of federal laws.

The IMC report said it’s also possible that Mexican pot producers would lose their competitive edge to U.S.-grown superior, seedless marijuana containing higher levels of (Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol or THC) than the Mexican marijuana now possesses. THC is the active ingredient in marijuana.

“When Prohibition ended in the United States, there were (labor) displacements into other illegal activities, as well as in the legal economy,” the IMC report said.

Prohibition against alcohol beverages in the United States produced a lucrative liquor-smuggling industry in Mexico from 1920 to the early 1930s.

In response to the possible legalization of marijuana in the United States, the IMC recommends that the Mexican government:

Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at dvaldez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6140.

• Oregon: Measure 80 is intended to end the state’s prohibition against marijuana.
• Washington: The I-502 measure asks voters to approve the regulation of marijuana instead of a ban.
• Not take steps to legalize marijuana until the U.S. federal government defines its response to legalization by one or all three U.S. states.
• Launch alternative development programs (agriculture) in the marijuana production zones.
• Monitor against potential reverse smuggling from the United States.

A Few Good Scots Could Change the World Right Now, Starting with Britain’s Nukes

Nato policy must serve the nation, not US corporate interests

Robin McAlpine

 

If an independent Scotland managed to join Nato and get rid of Trident, what then?

 

IN THE SNP’s debate over Nato, two cases are being made. One is that an independent Scotland could have its biggest impact by joining Nato and working with some of the more progressive countries in that alliance towards removing nuclear weapons from European soil.

 

The other argues that Scotland should remain outside Nato, remove nuclear weapons immediately and then work constructively with counties inside and outside Nato on a host of international issues to set a positive example to the world.

It is to be celebrated that Scotland can have this debate. Both of these visions of a Scottish international role are streets ahead of Britain’s stances of “the only way you’ll get our nukes from us is to prize them from our cold, dead hands” and “we agree with whatever the United States just said”.

However, we need to be realistic. Scotland is small and Nato’s interest in us is heavily tied up with our role as landlord to weapons of mass destruction.

All the experiences of bigger Nato ­countries in Europe are that you can ­certainly vote to remove nukes but voting doesn’t amount to much.

Not a single country has managed it and three – including mighty Germany – have passed votes in their parliament only to have them ignored.

But even if Scotland did join Nato and did manage to get rid of Trident from Scottish soil, what then? Is the best that we can hope for the fixed grin of the Nato group photo, us thinking we’re fighting the good fight, the rest of the world not noticing us in the shadows of US commercial interests?

Because on this I do agree with the pro-Nato side: Nato is not a Cold War relic. As a defensive force it is obsolete, but as a means of protecting commercial interests it has a very specific agenda.

The only conflict in the rough vicinity of Scotland which has been raised as a potential problem to which Nato might be the solution is a confrontation between the US and Russia over drilling rights for Arctic oil. What this means is that Scotland would be trapped in a treaty which requires us to stand side-by-side with Exxon Mobile in a shooting war with Gazprom.

We need to be clear: tiny Scotland would spend a lot more time biting its tongue than speaking words of wisdom to the US. We would have picked one side in a geopolitical war for commercial access to global natural resources and strategic position, and once that side is picked there is no nuance.

Perhaps the day the first shot is fired over Arctic snow by soldiers who flew there from Scottish airbases, Russia and China will instigate a boycott of Scotch whisky.

It will do no good then to say “but we tried”, because Scotland will have become a partisan nation which is engaged in wars of aggression. Scottish soldiers would be bombing Iran or blockading the Arctic many moons before Scottish ­diplomats negotiate even one bomb out of existence.

And it will leave us discredited where it really matters. Wilbert van der Zeijden is a senior figure in the international ­conflict resolution community. He warns that ­because of Nato membership the rest of the global community is “less inclined to take countries like the Netherlands seriously in the Conference on Disarmament, the NPT and other non-proliferation and disarmament forums.

“It would be entirely unnecessary and quite a bad move if Scotland manoeuvred itself in a similar position.”

I once knew someone who would get to every meeting early to secure a chair as close as possible to whomever he believed to be the most important person in the room. He thought we were impressed; we thought he was a bit sad.

The thing about credibility and integrity is that you are judged by your actions and not your explanations.

A Scotland in Nato will gain lip service from the US generals – the very ones who refer to Nato as Snow White and the Twenty Seven Dwarves. Everyone else on the world stage would write Scotland off as an adjunct to the US. In effect, having just gained a credible voice in international negotiations on nuclear non-proliferation, Scotland would choose to give it up again. Which would be a crying shame ­because if Scotland removed Trident from its soil its international credibility would be sky high.

Too many political insiders believe “grubby compromise” to be a synonym for “serious politics”. If Scotland became independent it would have plenty of time to seek out its own grubby compromises. It doesn’t need to be born in one.

Scotland could become the nation leading the world in a fresh effort to get rid of nuclear weapons. The international repercussions of Scotland effectively disarming one of the globe’s eight nuclear powers would be enormous.

It is not overblown to suggest that many in the international community would look to us for leadership, as evidence that a nuclear-free world is possible. To lose that voice for the sake of American corporate profits would be to squander a truly valuable prize.

 

• Robin McAlpine is director of the Jimmy Reid Foundation

India Leads the Way Back To Sanity, With A Strategic Rail Corrider from Iran To Russia

[There is hope for India after all!  Survival mandates that India relax its bear hug on America just a bit, so that a little daylight might shine between them.  This is absolutely the most intelligent step that could be taken at this time, by those who are working for either hope or stability in Afghanistan.  Now, if Obama would suddenly come out for routing his Silk Road pipeline project through Iran as well, even I would campaign for the man.]

India initiates rail route plan through Central Asia

Shubhajit Roy : New Delhi
India has taken the lead in what it calls “kickstarting” an “international north-south corridor” from Iran to Russia via Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to ensure a seamless connectivity to Central Asia. New Delhi wants this corridor to be operational by 2013.

Government sources said here on Wednesday that New Delhi met interlocutors from these partner countries in January to initiate the process. The plan, kept under the wraps so far, is in keeping with the the country’s “Look Central Asia policy”.

In this context, experts have identified the “missing links” in rail connectivity. “There is road connectivity, but what we want is a seamless rail connectivity. This will ensure a faster, a more hassle-free and less expensive way to transport goods through Iran to the Central Asian countries and further north to Russia,” a government source said.

What has not deterred India is additional sanctions on Iran by the US and EU, and Washington’s calls for snapping ties with Tehran.

Sources said that Iran and this corridor — which will be essentially rail-based — is India’s gateway to the Central Asian countries. “They are vital to our interests, since they border with either Afghanistan or China,” the source said. Three of the Central Asian countries share border with Afghanistan, while three others with China. India wants to build economic linkages with the markets in these countries. “We also need to engage them since there are no direct links with any of the Central Asian countries,” said official sources.

New Delhi is talking to all these countries to work on the feasibility of the corridor, and they are looking at operationalising the link at the earliest.

 

India and China Both Step-Up At UN for Palestinian Rights and Peace Through Negotiations

India offers to play role in achieving Middle East peace

UNITED NATIONS: Underlining the importance of the West Asian region to the international community, India has expressed its readiness to play a supportive role to achieve a just and comprehensive peace in the Middle East.

A cradle of human civilisation, the region is home to nearly five million Indians and is an important source for India’s energy needs, India’s Permanent Representative Hardeep Singh Puri noted during a discussion on “The situation in the Middle East” in the UN General Assembly Wednesday.

“As a nation with age-old historic and cultural ties with the Middle East, India has an abiding interest in the early resolution of all pending issues that have troubled the region since the inception of the United Nations,” he said.

Noting that India has been steadfast in its support for the Palestinian people’s struggle for a sovereign, independent, viable and united state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital, Puri reiterated India’s backing for Palestine’s full membership of the UN.

“We remain convinced that Palestine meets all criteria for UN membership as set out in the UN Charter and deserves to become a full-fledged member of this organisation. We hope that the Council will be able to support this soon,” he said.

For peace and security on the ground, however, it is necessary that direct talks between Israel and Palestine resume without any further delay, Puri said.

Recalling that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had told the General Assembly last September that societies cannot be reordered from outside through military force, he said: “Observance of the rule of law is as important in international affairs as it is within countries.”

China Calls for Settlement of Middle East Disputes through Political Negotiations

Xinhua      Web Editor: liuranran

China on Wednesday called on relevant parties in the Middle East to resolve their disputes through political negotiations with the goal of Palestine and Israel living side by side in peace. Li Baodong, permanent representative of Chinese mission to the UN, made the remarks at a meeting of the General Assembly on review of the Middle East situation and the Palestinian issue. Li said that the Middle East issue not only has a comprehensive impact on the situation in the Middle East, but also bears on world peace and stability. Political settlement of the Palestinian issue conforms to the universal aspiration of people of all countries in the region and the international community, and concerns the long-term peace and security of the Middle East region, he said. “We always maintain that the parties concerned should resolve their disputes through political negotiations under the relevant UN resolutions, the principle of ‘land for peace’, the Arab Peace Initiative and the Middle East Roadmap for Peace with the goal of ultimately establishing an independent Palestinian state and two states, Palestine and Israel, living side by side in peace,” he said. Li noted that China supports the efforts made by Quartet to promote resumption of the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. “We urge Israel to immediately cease settlements construction, call on the Palestinians and Israelis to work actively in collaboration with the efforts of the international community to promote peace, and create conditions for rebuilding mutual trust and breaking the impasse,” he said. The ambassador also stressed that China has all along supported the Palestinian people in their just cause to restore the lawful rights of the nations. China supports the establishment of an independent Palestinian state that enjoys full sovereignty, with East Jerusalem as its capital and based on the 1967 border as well as Palestine’s membership in the United Nations, he added.

Hope of stability

By Ulf Mauder and Stefan Korshak -
Central Asia’s sole democracy, Kyrgzstan, now has a fighting chance of staying that way, but it will be a battle, political observers said after the once-turbulent country held peaceful elections for a new president.
Nearly two-thirds of voters gave their support to Almazbek Atambayev, the current prime minister who has a reputation for pragmatism and who stood up to the rule brought down in 2010.
The vote surprised not only his 15 rivals but many observers who had predicted Kyrgyzstan would fail to choose a clear victor in Sunday’s poll — and would descend into political turmoil.
Atambayev, 55, was the highest-profile politician in the country after interim President Roza Otunbayeva. With her he has pushed through constitutional changes reducing the power of the country’s executive branch, so as to prevent a return of authoritarian government.
Observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) indicated Atambayev’s victory had been generally in keeping with democratic principles. But they also totted up a disconcerting crop of violations, including poorly maintained electoral rolls, ballot-box stuffing, and voters’ receiving and casting multiple ballots.
Criticism like this from Western vote monitors is common in Central Asia, but the response in Bishkek was anything but typical for the region. “Well if they (the OSCE) gave us that rating, then that’s pretty much the way we worked,” said Kyrgyzstan Central Election Commission chairman Gulnar Dzhurbaev.
“We will work on fixing the problems,” he said, in comments to Aki-Press. Political observers were predicting Atambayev would take the same workmanlike approach to the many problems facing Kyrgyzstan, which is strategically placed on transportation routes between China and Russia.
But success would not come easily, they said. “All 16 presidential candidates were positively disposed towards Russia,” said Andrei Grozin, Director of the Central Asia section of the Commonwealth of Independent States political research institute.
“But from Atambayev, besides rhetoric, there are already practical results,” he said in reference to the incoming president’s pro-Russian credentials.
In comments to the Interfax news agency, Grozin pointed to the steady increase in trade with Russia since Atambayev became prime minister in 2010, and said his policy of economic engagement with Moscow was one of the strongest selling points he had with voters.
In comments to the BBC after the election, Atambayev gave a broad hint of which way regional geopolitical winds were blowing, saying Manas Air Base — a section of Bishkek airport rented by Washington to supply its military operations in nearby Afghanistan — must shut down in 2014 when its lease runs out.
But even if Atambayev manages to jump-start Kyrgyzstan’s weak economy — close to half of the country’s citizens still depend on subsistence farming — and to kick out the United States as well, regional power groupings remain to stymie his leadership.
Among them are local powerbrokers like the Ata Shura (Fatherland) political party, and the country’s Uzbek minority, who live in the historically turbulent Ferghana valley.
In June last year, Kyrgyzstan was rocked by severe ethnic unrest between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, with an estimated 2,000 people dying in the cities Osh and Jalalabad.
Beyond thorny domestic politics and potentially explosive ethnic tensions, Kyrgyzstan’s culture of strong family and clan ties, which tend to promote nepotism and widespread corruption, were perhaps the greatest impediments to Kyrgyzstan’s development, said Kyrgyzstan political scientist Valentin Bogatyrev in comments to dpa.
Atambayev will take office in December. In one of his first post-election comments, he spelled out his administration’s goal. “My goal is to unite the country. That is what we must do first.”

Did Russia and China Put End to the Arab Spring?

By Irina LEBEDEVA (USA)

On Tuesday, October 4th, Russia and China vetoed the UNSC resolution on Syria, which – if adopted – would have offered the implementation of the Libyan scenario in the country. The US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, however, warned against any parallels between Libya and Syria, saying that the Libyan precedent was used ‘as an excuse’ by some countries which wanted to sell arms to Bashar Assad`s government.

U.S journalists asked Mrs. Rice whether she really believed that a similar resolution on Libya, which had resulted in NATO bombings there, did not affect the decision on Syria, with India, Brazil, and South Africa, the countries which abstained, being also interested in selling arms to Syria.

Susan Rice insisted that Libya was just ‘an excuse’, while a resolution initiated by the European countries ‘could not be opposed in any way’. But this time Russia and China did not fall under this rhetorical spell. Russia`s envoy to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, described the resolution on Syria as too categorical and based on ‘philosophy of confrontation’.

On voting day Le Monde published an article headlined ‘The West Urges UN to Condemn Syria Repressions’, which quoted outraged French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, who said that if Russia would veto the resolution, it would be a ‘change in position’ because Moscow had allegedly approved a draft resolution the day before the voting. “Mr. Juppe expects Russia to revise its decision since the text of the resolution, though not faultless, still offered a good ground for negotiating”.

A proposed draft resolution condemned ‘the continuation of serious and regular human rights violations in Syria’ and demanded an immediate halt of violence. The resolution promised ‘measures’ in case the Syrian regime would not have improved the situation within 30 days. As critics of NATO bombings in Libya, the European ministers stressed that they had no intentions to undertake similar actions in Syria, Le Monde said. However, this did not make Russia, China, as well as non-permanent UN member states -India and South Africa – change their attitude.

And it has turned to be for the better, indeed. Despite efforts made by some world leaders to smooth over controversy surrounding the previous UN resolutions, which led to a catastrophe in Libya, the repetition of this scenario in Syria is at least postponed, though the country, as well as other vulnerable countries of the region, should better not relax before time.

The same article in Le Monde mentions Turkey`s Prime Minister, who “betrayed his friend” (Bashar Assad). “There is another thing highlighting a changing Turkish position towards Syria – the fact that Turkey gave shelter to a fugitive Syrian Colonel, founder of ‘The Free Syrian Army’ opposition army group, uniting over 7,000 refugees”, says the paper.

In the meantime, supported by London and Paris, Turkey has been busy training militants and opposition figures supposed to topple the Syrian regime and establish a transitional council like the one in Libya… On October 2d, a meeting to discuss the creation of the Syrian national council took place in Istanbul, which was confirmed by a certain Burkhan Galiun, who represented the Paris-based Center for Contemporary Oriental Studies. During a press-conference in Istanbul, Mr. Galiun said that a ‘historical’ national council was ‘working to unite the Syrian society in the name of revolution, in order to topple the regime, including its leader”. The council, mainly represented by immigrants, united various opposition groups, including the so-called ‘coordination committees’, as well as by liberals, members of the long-banned in Syria Muslim Brotherhood Islamist party, and also by Kurds and Assyrians. According to Mr. Galiun, only these people can defend the right of Syrians to freedom. The agenda of the transitional council is being composed in London by the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (OSDH). It is also there where pictures of ‘horror’ in Syria are made to stir up hatred towards Assad`s regime. As this fugitive Syrian said, a NATO-trained Free Syrian Army should pave the way to the ‘permanent revolution’. Meanwhile, Russia`s and China`s veto has cooled the ardor of these ‘free armies’.

The French envoy to the UN, Gerard Araud, said the veto showed “disdain for the legitimate interests that have been fought for in Syria” since the protests in the country began. Well, knowing the tragedy and cynicism of the so-called ‘strive for freedom’, I hope that the French diplomat was not mistaken.

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

The Ideology of the Loser–Is Not a Winning Strategy

The Ideology of the Loser–

Is Not a Winning Strategy

Peter Chamberlin

The more that we observe our fellow man, the more obvious it becomes that humanity is unable to understand the problems that it causes for itself.  If humans do not have the intellectual capacity to recognize most of their problems as being self-generated, then they are obviously incapable of correcting any of these life-threatening obstacles to the progression of mankind’s advancement, on their own.  Leaving intellectually inferior beings in charge of the safety of the human race in the middle of an epochal historical confluence of multiple calamities is an existential form of negligence.   The survival of the race requires that ways be found to institute a more capable decision-making process in the halls of power.

No better example of our intellectual shortcomings could be found than in the recently concluded battle in Washington over raising the debt ceiling.  Instead of solving the problems between the contrasting prevailing political opinions, the negotiating heads preferred to fight-out an opinion battle in the national press, proving that American government has degenerated into a “three-ring circus,” or a never-ending soap opera.  Despite the threats, no real damage was done to the veterans, the elderly and the disabled, other than increasing their stress levels.   The damages that have been done to our already mud-stained reputation are only helping to accelerate the global economic crisis.

The nature of the unfolding world crisis is one of an endless series of overlapping crises, with each crisis compounding the effects of previous blow-ups.  An overwhelming global economic interruption is underway, but all of its negative effects are being made worse by endless military adventurism, which is heaping debt upon the center by the trillions.  Before Obama got his way, most of us had never even contemplated what a “trillion dollars” actually meant.  Now we toss the word around like it is really just business as usual, and not the most obvious signal that the whole thing has blown-up in their faces.

We are witnessing the outcome of a failed political system, which allows our Nation’s fate to be subjected to political considerations.  By allowing government policy to be set by a dialectical see-saw, where the latest “winner takes all” politician jerks the decision-making process to either the right or the left, regardless of the fact that the correct answer would be a steady hand on the tiller, holding it like an anchor to the center.

Despite the fact that the losing party understands precisely the damage being done to our Constitutional Republic by their actions or inactions, it is usually the losing party which is the most vicious in its knee-jerk political actions.  Invariably you will find, that it is the losing party which wages war upon the Republic itself as the means to correct the policies of the “treasonous” opponent.  Instead of proving their wild ideas, they would prefer to hold their opponents to task, no matter what the human cost.

In this ideology of the loser, no actions taken to rectify the serious “errors” of their opponents can be considered to be as severe or as harmful as the opposition’s rhetorical attacks.  It seems that terrorism is an acceptable form of battle in the war against seditious ideas.  Knowledge that those entrusted to lead us attach greater importance to discrediting their opponents’ ideas than they do to validating their own (that the political battle is more important than the ideas being fought over), provides us a key to understanding the inadequacies of the human mind.

Vanity is the racial guarantor of our species’ stagnation.  We have to make an effort to rise above our pride and accept new ways of thinking which make room for some sort of decision-making mechanism which relies upon intellects greater than the minds of individual men.  Whether this new intellectual force is to be AI, cybernetically-enhanced human minds, or some computer-aided mechanism for tapping into the collective intellect of the greatest living minds, the human race must find some way to inject intellect into the governmental decision-making process.  Stupid decisions are killing us.  Individual personalities in control, like we have now, produce not just government gridlock, but the situation which we face, where every effort made to improve the situation as determined by the greatest political minds, only serves to make matters worse.

Human potential is equal to the total mass of all human “prodigies” added together, even the overlooked ones locked behind the barriers of poverty and the great class divide.  Our potential to overcome our problems is limitless, if our potential were ever really tapped-into.  This tells us that a true human renaissance awaits our children, in the very near future, dependent only upon us to make the changes which set their positive future into motion. The key to its unlocking it lies dormant, unused, because it has been hidden by hands which have a monetary stake in preventing a great awakening.  Our civilization will either dead-end in the great ash heap of history, or we will step onto a new track to a better destination, together.  The decision will either be made at the highest levels to do what is best for the American people and for the human race, or we will drink deeply of a deadly dose of apathy, but only if we lose the will to live.

Once the world of money and politics is revealed as a great parasitic infestation, that is sapping the life out of the human race, with its vapid political/military solutions to every problem that comes our way, then the popular support for tyranny will simply fade away.    The time will soon come when all the emperors will stand naked before us, after they have been completely discredited the political/economic system that has nurtured them and their evil ways, overwhelming them with rivers of profits.  The great injustice is that the economic tsunami which they have let loose upon the world will not focus solely upon the wave’s creators, but will dispense injustice equally to us all.  Those at the top who are holding-on so tightly to the reigns of economic power (trying to squeeze every drop of profit out of the bankrupt systems in vain attempts to save themselves as well as their ill-gotten possessions) are strangling the lifelines for us all.  Breaking their death grips will not spare anyone from the deluge that is coming, but it will open the supply lines that should already be flowing from a “humanitarian” government to the people, before the emergency hits, making survival easier for someone.

So you see, we are faced with two constants, which, when added together, reveal that our world is headed full speed to a great collision with the overtaking new world.  It will either be the “New World Order” that many of us dread, or it will be a new world of our own making, a world that can only be discovered through experiments in collective “pulse-taking” (lessons to be learned from in place social networking), or other efforts to find the paths to democracy.   When our worlds collide, visions of Empire will go up in smoke, but some new order will arise from the ashes, none the less.  When the constant of the inevitability of the failure of political government is realized, then that is the moment when our greatest opportunity will arise.  It will be the great moment of hope for all mankind, when genius is given the opportunity to provide the answers which human guile could never supply.

How do we steer away from the corporate New World Order, and set a course for freedom and universal human rights?  Look toward our leaders and compare their words with leading thinkers–how do they compare?  The recognized leaders all speak with one voice, even though they claim to be from different political parties.  They project an aura of self-assurance, righteousness in the cause of justice.  Yet their actions consistently contradict their words.   Activists from both the right and the left spend their time trying to make the corrupted leadership eat their own words.  In this ideological struggle, truth is the only weapon.  He who possesses the most verifiable truth wins the war.

The truth is–we are not winning this war; we are not telling the truth about the war; we are not the good guys this time.

Social agitators, activists and other agents for change are people driven by their own vision—seeing into our negative future binds us all to a compulsory moral duty, to work for positive changes.  If we see that our species, that our children will one day in their future, reach the point of  losing all hope, then we would not be “fit parents,” allowing that to happen.  If their last real hope was in us, that we would NOT let that happen to them and to their world, then who, or what force could stop us from throwing ourselves into the gears of the Imperial war machine?  This is what makes us so dangerous to the powers that be.  We who foresee the need to stand-up for something greater than ourselves, will willingly give-up our lives to stop them, once we understand the gravity of the situation.  The knowledge of what has been done to America and the darkness that is still planned for us are powerful testimony of the loyalties of the people who have been running this country.  It is irrefutable.  Making more and more people aware of the true connection between our government and world terrorism will light political fires that no corrupted system could withstand.   The power of the people will be an awesome sight to see.

Our great despair is that we are among a growing minority, those who can see where we are heading, including the unfortunate timing of our births.  We have been privy to the birth pains of the coming Great Changing of humankind, aware of the great things to come, even though many of us will not be parties to the joyous event itself.  The best that we can hope for in the here and now is to find all the truth that is within our grasp and then use it as the ultimate weapons available to us, in order to knock-down the walls which conceal the greatest truths from us all.  The politics of money is a process of creating divisions and building walls.  The impending human awakening will come when we either learn how to rise above all the walls, or acquire the means to tear them all down.

When the political path collapses before us, reducing all the walls that have been erected to enforce the man-made divisions, into great piles of rubble.   The cost of recovery will be set by the amount of time required to set humanity upon a new, better path.  The longer that we remain on the negative path to destruction, before turning around to begin the reconstruction, the greater the amount of limited funds that will be wasted in the fires of war—the less that will be available for the time of building.

At that time, it will become clear to all, that the true revolutionary is the man or woman who can see a better way, NOT he who is a journeyman at committing political violence.  The violent radical who fancies himself a true “revolutionary,” is merely someone who is taking credit for the inevitable collapse of a failing Empire, at best, they may have helped to speed-up parts of that collapse.

It turns-out that the most revolutionary act is one of simple persuasion, trying to convince the men who have the most to lose, to turn the machinery onto the path of creativity, away from the road to our destruction.  The problem with this approach is the futility of the task, the utter impossibility of convincing the ultra-wealthy to give-up the very thing that has given them all of this power.  (Shoving a camel through the eye of a needle might really be easier.)  In order to convince lesser mortals to work towards turning humanity around, you must first persuade them to give-up hope in the great capitalist dream.  The power of that dream maintains a terrible grip upon the minds of mankind, breaking it will necessarily require a series of individual awakenings, until the weight of that awakened minority is felt by the whole mass of humanity.  We increase our numbers of aware individuals until we affect, or infect the whole (SEE:  Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas).

This line of thinking reveals three tasks before us—giving credibility to the negative vision, giving form to the new direction, and creating the conviction of inevitability.  We have already covered the first task to a great degree by covering the conspiracies that are guiding the chaos.  The collapsing economy and the perpetuation of persistent conflict are both products of ineptitude and deception.  Proving incompetence and that  we have been lied to on a grand scale will help to convince the people that our leaders are idiots and their solutions are merely prolongations of the problems nothing more than political theater and propaganda.  The second task will be a bit harder, in that it is far more difficult to bring substance to a vision out of thin air, painting an image of a better way to invest in mankind.  The third task of communicating the abstract quantity of “inevitability” to a church filled with the under-educated faithful (SEE:  Sermon from the Corporate Church) could border on the impossible.

Democracy is NOT a “two-party system.”  Our glorious political system is a formula for manufacturing divisions, if not a template for outright civil war.  Pushing this upon the world is a criminal act.  What our “trusted” leaders have done is to strangle the American Republic to the point of near death, in an organized scheme of mass-extortion and bribery, focused on the perpetuation of power and the subjugation of an entire Nation.  Pushing this arrangement upon other countries under pretense of helping is a formula for taking-over the political system of those countries.

Not being satisfied with the mass-rape and looting operations which have destroyed the American economy, these same leaders and the political factions which they represent, are mid-stream in the world’s greatest plot to seize control of the entire planet.  Waist-deep in a raging economic river of their own making, our fearless leaders are also being swept away by the forces that they have helped to unleash and by those that they should have worked to contain.  Instead of working to control the uncontrolled flood, they are content to roll with it, pouring endless sacks of money into the torrent, never once stopping to fill any of those same canvas bags with sand.  Why build dams or levees in hopes of containing the destruction, when half of your men are busy dynamiting other levees?

The insanity of political man will continue to prevail until men and women of reason stand-up and show us a better way.  The parade of idiots will continue and the dead weight of their archaic political beliefs will override common sense for as long as we let them.  Until we fully realize the great genetic gifts that we have been blessed with, we will continue to follow the crooked path that leads us to the “idiot nation.”  Until we utilize the greatest computer ever built by the hands of God, or at least dedicate the best computers built by man, to the task of preserving our species, we will continue to flounder on the rocks of ignorance.

What could be worse than total idiots leading the blind?

chamberlinpeter@hotmail.com

There really will be “Life after capitalism.”]

[Until world leaders accept that our economic crisis is a wildfire, out of control, they will continue pouring on the little that is left, in hopes of beating the inevitable.  If you look at the European or American economies as giant forests, and the economic crisis as a massive forest fire, it would be easier to understand exactly what is happening with each "TARP" or other similar rescue effort.  As the fire expands, it burns-up things that may have taken years to grow.  Wasting those resources in feeble attempts to erect "firewalls" doesn't stop the fire, it only slows it down, or forces the fire to take an easier path, but that doesn't mean that there will be no backfire.  In the end, the accumulated water (capital) would have evaporated in the flames and the survivors would be in worse shape than if the fire-fighting effort had not been made.  The wisest solution would be to wisely use the limited supply of capital we now have, to put the survivors in a better position after the blaze has passed.  That means that investments should be focused upon the parts of the economy which were devastated first, making them first to recover in the new economy which will take shape.

There really will be "Life after capitalism."]

EU May Accept Greek Default as Crisis Fight Intensifies

By Simon Kennedy and Jonathan Stearns

Euro-area leaders redoubled efforts to end the 21-month sovereign bond crisis as they erected a firewall around Spain and Italy and risked temporary default to lighten Greece’s debt burden.

After eight hours of talks in Brussels, leaders announced 159 billion euros ($229 billion) of new aid for Greece late yesterday and cajoled bondholders into footing part of the bill. They also empowered their 440-billion euro rescue fund to buy debt across stressed euro nations after a market rout last week sparked concern the crisis was spreading. The fund can also aid troubled banks and offer credit-lines to repel speculators.

Greek, Spanish and Italian bonds rose after officials drew concessions from Germany, the European Central Bank and investors for a twin-track strategy to support Greece and ensure its woes don’t spread. The summit is the latest in a running- battle to resolve the crisis amid calls this week for tougher action from U.S. President Barack Obamaand the International Monetary Fund.

“These measures are welcome because they create the best possible conditions for Greece and other peripheral countries to put their houses in order and hence limit the risk of contagion,” said Marco Valli, chief euro-area economist at UniCredit SpA in Milan. “Still, the market will continue to price some probability that troubled countries will not be up to the challenge.”

Bond Rebound

The yield on Greece’s two-year government note, which rose above 40 percent yesterday, has since plunged more than 1,300 basis points and was at 26.63 percent at 12:13 p.m. in Brussels.

Italian and Spanish bonds climbed for a fourth day, with the yields on 10-year debt falling to 5.25 percent and 5.62 percent, respectively. Both exceeded 6 percent last week. The euro was little changed at $1.4410 after jumping as much as 1.6 percent yesterday.

The Greek financing package will consist of 109 billion euros from the euro region and the IMF. Financial institutions will contribute 50 billion euros after agreeing to a series of bond exchanges and buybacks that will also cut Greece’s debt load, the leaders’ communiqué said.

The European Commission plans to brief reporters on the package’s technical details at 1 p.m. in Brussels.

European Monetary Fund

The leaders sought to regain the initiative after market turmoil intensified amid a spat between ECB President Jean- Claude Trichet and German Chancellor Angela Merkel over how to manage the crisis. The outlook was worsened by signs that Greece was backsliding on axing its budget deficit as it struggles to cut a debt of 143 percent of gross domestic product. A Bank of America Merrill Lynch poll this week showed investors trimming their European stock holdings to the lowest in more than a year.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy compared the transformation of the bailout fund to the creation of a “European Monetary Fund.”

“This meeting came at a difficult time,” Merkel told reporters. “I’m satisfied with the outcome because the euro countries showed today that we are up to the challenge, we can take action.”

The risk is that the drive will fall prey to the same internal European Union wrangling that blunted previous drives to stop the crisis. Bond purchases by the European Financial Stability Facility, the region’s rescue fund, will need the “mutual agreement” of member states and the facility may not be large enough should markets turn on Italy and Spain at the same time. Leaders also refused to increase its size.

Crisis Management

“The EFSF has gone from being a single-barreled gun to a Gatling gun, but with the same amount of ammo,” Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup Inc., told Maryam Nemazee on Bloomberg Television. “It needs to be increased in size urgently.”

Sarkozy and other leaders also stressed that the Greek package won’t be replicated for other countries.

European officials tried to draw a line under the crisis in May 2010 when they set up the bailout fund and the ECB agreed to buy government bonds of debt-laden nations. That didn’t stop Ireland and Portugal needing bailouts when splits over how to make investors participate in financial rescues prompted a new wave of bond market selling later in the year.

The pact still doesn’t “make a significant dent” in Greece’s debt and may disappoint investors by failing to boost the size of the rescue fund, said Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in London. “We doubt that this package alone will bring an end to recent contagion effects and prevent the broader debt crisis from continuing to deepen over the coming months.”

German Coalition

For now, Merkel and her allies have succeeded in their drive to make investors co-finance bailouts after voters balked at the cost of saving spendthrift nations.

“The summit resolutions fulfill the main elements of German coalition lawmakers’ demands, above all the participation of the private sector in solving this crisis,” Hans Michelbach, a lawmaker in Merkel’s ruling coalition, said in a telephone interview. “I see that a majority of coalition lawmakers will support Mrs. Merkel in parliament.”

Banks will reduce Greece’s debt by 13.5 billion euros by exchanging bonds and “potentially much more” through a buyback program still to be outlined by governments, said the Institute of International Finance, a Washington-based group representing banks.

Investors will have the option to exchange existing Greek debt into four instruments. Three will be fully collateralized by AAA-rated zero-coupon securities and have a 30-year maturity, and the fourth will be for 15 years and partially collateralized by funds held in an escrow account.

Sovereign Default

Crisis managers are aiming for a 90 percent participation rate from Greek bondholders.

“With this offer, the global investor community is stepping forward in recognition of the unique challenges facing Greece,” said IIF Managing Director Charles Dallara. The gathering was also attended by Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officer Josef Ackermann and BNP Paribas SA counterpart Baudouin Prot.

The ECB removed an obstacle to a new bailout after Trichet softened his opposition to a default which may be declared by credit rating companies if the debt swap occurs. The ECB had until now said the euro region’s first sovereign default could spark a bout of financial turmoil, clashing with Merkel’s position that a default could be inevitable.

Trichet Solace

Trichet signaled governments will guarantee any defaulted Greek debt offered as collateral during money market operations. That may enable Greek banks to keep tapping the ECB for emergency funds. Officials said the aim would be limit any credit event to a few days.

“The ECB pushed the argument as far as it could,” said Laurent Bilke, an economist at Nomura International Plc in London who used to work at the ECB. “It is Europe, everything is a compromise.”

Under the plan, Greece and fellow bailout recipients Portugal and Ireland will also have theinterest rate on emergency loans pared. Maturities will be lengthened to as long as three decades with a 10-year grace period.

Trichet may gain solace from the bailout fund’s wider remit which he repeatedly sought since the ECB suspended its own bond buying program in April amid concern it was doing the work of governments. Germany previously rejected broadening the EFSF, whose size was beefed up to its original lending target as recently as last month.

Passing Money

The facility will be able to buy debt directly from investors so long as creditors agree and the ECB declares “exceptional financial market circumstances.” EU President Herman Van Rompuy said the purchases could be used to stabilize markets as the ECB was doing or to help countries retire debt at a discount.

The fund may also start passing money to countries to support banks a week after stress tests on 90 financial institutions put as many as 24 under pressure to show they can raise capital. Precautionary credit lines would allow it to lend to nations before markets freeze, mimicking a system introduced by the IMF for states that start losing investor faith even though they have relatively sound economies.

Governments will have to ratify the facility’s new powers, posing a potential obstacle given domestic critics in Germany, Finland and the Netherlands.

Leaders dumped a suggestion to finance Greek aid through a tax on banks with a French official noting the threat had nudged banks into agreeing to help in other ways. While they signaled no shift toward issuing joint bonds, Germany’s Deputy Foreign Minister Werner Hoyer said in an interview on July 20 that it may eventually back the concept “if we further develop the European Union towards a political union.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Simon Kennedy in Brussels atskennedy4@bloomberg.net Jonathan Stearns in Brussels at jstearns2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Craig Stirling at cstirling1@bloomberg.net

Indians and Pakistanis Form Human Chain In Protest of Mumbai Terror Attacks

India-Pakistan human chain to protest Mumbai blasts

New Delhi, July 16 (IANS)

Raising slogans promising support to each other against terrorism, several Indian and Pakistani citizens Saturday gathered near Rajghat here and formed a human chain to protest the July 13 Mumbai blasts that left at least 19 people dead and injured 130.

The event was organised by various NGOs from both sides of the border. Holding posters and flowers, those gathered raised slogans like “Atankwad ho barbad, humari dosti zindabad” (Terrorism should be destroyed, long live our friendship). “It’s high time that peace prevailed in both the countries and I think that is not possible without the cooperation of the citizens,” said Sheema Kirmani of Tehrik-e-Niswan, an NGO from Karachi holding a poster that read “Shak ke bavandar se bahar aao, milkar shanti failao” (Come out of the whirlpool of suspicion, spread peace together). Agreed Faisal Khan of Delhi-based NGO the National Alliance of People’s Movement, who said that cowardly attacks like the one in Mumbai could never rattle the strong Indian democratic and secular setup. “They (the perpetrators) think that such attacks would result in communal violence in the country. But they fail miserably every time,” Khan told IANS. The participants agreed that terrorism plagued both the nations and it was time that people got together and cleared misunderstandings, if any existed. Theatre person and political analyst Anwer Jaferi from Karachi said: “Same kind of attacks happen in Pakistan too and these are just attempts to spread hatred between the two communities and countries.” Jaferi said his theatre group was performing an anti-war play in different Indian cities when the blast took place in Mumbai. So, they decided to join the event.

When the neighbour’s house catches fire

THE HINDU

By M. K. Bhadrakumar

Pakistani security officials escort American CIA contractor Raymond Allen Davis, center, to a local court in Lahore. Mr. Davis’ detention soured U.S. – Pak relations, and the fallout of the episode has affected subsequent American strategy in West Asia. File photo

India should evolve a joint strategy with Pakistan to fight terror and build a regional initiative on Afghanistan.

 

Two things that happened in the subcontinent last Wednesday promise to be a game changer in regional politics. That they happened simultaneously in India and Pakistan and manifested an unspoken harmony of spirit — although by no means coordinated — make them meaningful. First, seldom, if ever, would soft-spoken Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram feel the need to raise his voice and firmly contradict a newspaper story — as he did on Wednesday in the Indian capital. But then, the New York Times story was, as Mr. Chidambaram said, “highly exaggerated.”

It was based on the musings of an erstwhile “unidentified” Pakistani militant commander who apparently fell out of favour with his mentors in the security establishment in Islamabad for unknown reasons, to the effect that the Pakistani military establishment is keeping in reserve an army of trained Kashmiri militants numbering 14,000 to be unleashed on India at a future date. The import of the narrative is all too apparent: succinctly put, India is barking up the wrong tree by trying to sustain a dialogue with Pakistan. From a slightly different angle, the message is also that India and the United States are sailing in the same boat and that the commonality of interests demands that they act in concert to squeeze Pakistan — a sort of variant of the “hammer-and-anvil” proposition that U.S. commander in Afghanistan David Petraeus used to propose to the Pakistani army chief, Parvez Kayani, in happier times with the intent to squeeze the Pashtun tribes on the Durand Line.

Equally, on Wednesday, Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani made a significant speech in Mingora in the Swat valley — not far from Jammu and Kashmir. From all accounts, the speech had two halves — one full of unease over the U.S.’ recent attempts to destabilise Pakistan and the other an overture to India. Mr. Gilani said: “Pakistan views India as the most important neighbour and desires sustained, substantive and result-oriented process of dialogue to resolve all outstanding issues, including the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir. We sincerely hope that [the] ongoing process of comprehensive engagement will be fruitful. However, India will have to play a more positive and accommodating role and respond to Pakistan’s legitimate security concerns.” Mr. Gilani travelled to Swat with General Kayani and they shared the podium from where the Prime Minister made his speech. Clearly, there is a larger backdrop.

It all goes back to the detention of the U.S. intelligence operative and former army man, Raymond Davis, in Lahore in January in circumstances that are not still quite clear. At any rate, ever since Mr. Davis’ detention in January, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship has been in disarray. Mr. Davis was kept under detention for two months and subjected to intense grilling. It stands to reason that the Pakistani authorities got to know all that they wanted to know and were afraid to ask their American allies for quite some time about the gamut of their covert activities in Pakistan — vis-à-vis insurgent groups and the Pakistani military and security establishment. The chilling truth is that U.S. President Barack Obama personally intervened to get Mr. Davis released but Pakistan held on to him for yet another month in an extraordinary display of defiance. Suffice to say, the alchemy of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship has since changed almost unrecognisably — from both ends.

Pakistan promptly began acting on Mr. Davis’ revelations and drew the famous “red lines” — asking the U.S. (and the British) military personnel to leave; demanding that the U.S. cease its covert operations on Pakistani soil; insisting that future cooperation in intelligence should be based on explicit ground rules. In short, Pakistan understood that the U.S. had gone about establishing direct talks with the Taliban, keeping it out of the loop. A fundamental contradiction has arisen. Pakistan’s cooperation in the U.S.-led war — starting from the seminal understanding reached between the two countries following the crucial visit by Secretary of State Colin Powell to Islamabad on October 16, 2001 — has been predicated on the American pledge that Islamabad would be a key player in any Afghanistan settlement and Washington would accommodate Pakistan’s legitimate security interests.

But then, the war has transformed, the regional environment has changed and U.S.’ priorities have changed. What began as a Texan-style revenge act against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington is today imbued with the hidden agenda of the U.S.’ regional strategies. It has become imperative for the U.S. to deal directly with the Taliban and not through intermediaries. Admittedly, the U.S. is looking for an end to the war and is willing to accommodate the Taliban, provided the latter acquiesces to its military bases in Afghanistan.

However, Washington has factored in that after the Davis affair, there is no way Pakistan would cooperate with a U.S. strategy to establish a permanent military presence in Afghanistan. Put simply, Pakistan can never trust the U.S.’ intentions and Washington is aware of that. Thus was born the U.S. counterstrategy to turn the table on Pakistan. The sudden pullout of U.S. troops from Pech valley in the province of Kunar in eastern Afghanistan began on February 15 while Mr. Davis was under detention, and it was completed in two months’ time. What followed since then was entirely predictable — various insurgent groups ranging from the Afghani and Pakistani Taliban, Hizb-i-Islami, al-Qaeda affiliates and the Lashkar-e-Taiba have consolidated their safe haven in Kunar. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. intelligence has already made contacts with some of them. Therefore, what began happening since May along the Durand Line can be aptly described as a “low-intensity war” against Pakistan.

Cross-border attacks, shelling, terrorist strikes and wanton destruction have become a daily occurrence. Armed groups come down from Kunar and neighbouring provinces to attack Pakistani forces, which retaliate with artillery fire; insurgent groups fight against each other; the conflict zone has expanded beyond FATA to Chitral mountains in the Northern Areas in the upper reaches of Kashmir. The implications are devastating for Pakistan. The Durand Line question has been ripped open. Some obscure snake charmer has summoned the serpent of Pashtun nationalism to raise its hood. Pakistan faces an existential challenge. For the snake charmer, this may seem the use of “smart power” to entrap the Pakistani military in a quagmire of Pashtun nationalism so that it has no energy left to dabble in Afghan affairs. And, this may also be “smart power” at its best. For, the tensions on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border also threaten to spoil the new atmospherics in Kabul-Islamabad ties — built around Pakistan’s support for an ‘Afghan-led’ and ‘Afghan-owned’ peace process led by President Hamid Karzai.

Mr. Karzai is obliged to react to the violation of territorial integrity of his country, cross-border terrorism and Pashtun sub-nationalism. But he is also conscious of the criticality of sustaining cordial links with Islamabad since Pakistan is his key interlocutor for both building up a durable settlement and checkmating sustained American conspiracies to marginalise him. Mr. Karzai’s predicament is vaguely similar to India’s. The difference, of course, is that India’s cooperation can actually be a “force multiplier” in the U.S.’ strategy to isolate Pakistan.

But the Indian policymakers seem to continue to patiently plough the furrow of dialogue with Pakistan by taking a differentiated view of regional developments through the prism of India’s long-term interests in a stable relationship with Pakistan. The tone of India-Pakistan statements has changed lately. Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao’s acknowledgment of the incipient signs of Pakistan moving toward a rethink on terrorism has been carefully noted in Pakistan. Thus, Mr. Gilani’s statement in Swat probably intends at reinforcing a salient in the India-Pakistan dialogue that is struggling to be born. That he made the statement in the presence of Gen. Kayani needs to be noted.

Indeed, this is not the time for India to display triumphalism that Pakistan faces a challenge to its integrity from the menace of the cross-border terrorism which, in many ways, it unleashed in the region. The fire in India’s neighbourhood is spreading and it has reached the upper reaches of the Kashmir Valley. Statesmanship lies in evolving a joint India-Pakistan strategy to fight terrorism and to evolve a regional initiative on the Afghan problem. A critical mass is gradually accruing — to the effect that India and Pakistan’s legitimate interests in the stabilisation of the Afghan situation are reconcilable. Afghanistan figured in Ms Rao’s consultations in Tehran. The qualitative difference from the late 1990s is that neither Delhi nor Tehran is locked in a zero-sum game with Islamabad. The time is ripe for India, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan to draw closer together as the regional stakeholders with the highest stakes in ending the war and stabilising Afghanistan.

Pakistan intends to host a trilateral summit with Iran and Afghanistan by the year-end, which could be an appropriate occasion for an enlarged regional initiative. However, for all this to gain traction, Pakistan must conclusively turn away from the use of force to settle differences with India.

(The writer is a former diplomat.)

Peace Between India and Pakistan Would Prove That There Is Hope for Mankind, After All

[Peace between Israel and Palestine, peace between Russia and Georgia, peace between the United States and the rest of the world--any of these solutions would prove to me that there is hope for our race, after all, no matter how bad things might normally seem.  There is only one possible way to solve those intractable persistent warfare scenarios--Keep Talking.  What ever you do--Keep on talking, it is the only known path to peace (other than the return of the Messiah, the Prince of Peace).]

‪Keep Talking‬‏, posted with vodpod

S. Asia must fight ‘scourge of terrorism’: Indian PM

AFP

“The scourge of terrorism has taken a huge toll on all our societies. It is a cancer, that if not checked, will consume us all,” Manmohan Singh said. – File Photo

NEW DELHI: South Asian nations must make greater efforts to fight terrorism without relying on outside help, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told a regional conference in New Delhi.

Stressing that South Asia could prosper as a whole, Singh said there was a need to develop a “culture” in which the countries involved would be able to tackle the region’s deep frictions.

“The scourge of terrorism has taken a huge toll on all our societies. It is a cancer, that if not checked, will consume us all,” Singh told a gathering of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

“I would like to believe that we have the will and foresight to prevent such an outcome,” Singh said on Saturday. “Others cannot solve our problems for us.”

Singh added the region’s youthful population was an opportunity but also a challenge.

“Disaffection and alienation provide a fertile breeding ground for intolerance, violence and terrorism which then threaten our societies,” he said.

SAARC, founded in 1985, groups Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Critics have blamed its inability to exploit the region’s potential on the long and bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan.

Relations between the two nations, which have fought three wars since the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947, have been plagued by border and resource disputes, and accusations of Pakistani militant activity against India.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

[In typical American politics of brinksmanship, which normally follows a pattern of "end of the world" type predictions (followed by pragmatic compromise), you have the Republicans trying to tear it all down, while the Democrats do everything that they can to prevent that from happening.  The anarchic philosophy of the Republicans butts heads with the Democrats' unwillingness to let any program end, leading us to the same place year after year, as they maintain our non-functioning government.  The Reagan Republicans are there to make sure that it all falls down, so that they might be elected again to rebuild it all under their new design.  To give-in, at this time, to the demolition politics of the Reaganites, would be the end of the American Empire, leaving only the defense-related corporations intact.  A $4 Trillion debt-reduction package, which targeted only non-defense related expenses, would increase the suffering of the American people exponentially, at a time when every family is in need of some form of economic relief.  This is of no consequence to the neoconservatives.

On the other hand, when the primary problem with the American economy is all the "pork," which never gets trimmed from the budget, then the intransigence of the Democrats prevents any constructive solution, which will surely require a lot of economic demolition.  The US budget seems as though it has been put together, based on the whims of a thousand drunken sailors--there is something for everybody in there.  The compromise between the idiotic positions of the Republicans and Democrats, of $2 trillion in budget cuts, instead of $4, is not a solution, but is, in fact, just an excuse for not fixing anything, plodding on as ever before.

To save America from these Bozos, we have to let their "Amerika"  fall away.  We cannot preserve a militaristic, parasitic economic system, which perpetuates the absolute unfairness of penalizing the poor and the "Middle Class," in order to further the enrichment of the rich.  Their pirate politics of plundering the Nation, have destroyed our "way of life," even though the claim is that our many wars are being fought against people who have done us no wrong, in order to protect us.  

It is high time we got our house into order.  It is time to find-out if there really is "Life after capitalism."]

Boehner abandons goal of $4 trillion debt-reduction package

By Paul Kane, Washington Post

WASHINGTON – House Speaker John Boehner, Republican of Ohio, abandoned efforts last night to reach a comprehensive debt-reduction deal worth more than $4 trillion in savings, telling President Obama that a midsize package was the only politically possible alternative to avoid a first-ever default on the nation’s mounting national debt.

Boehner told Obama – who is hosting a key meeting tonight on the debt issue – that their efforts to “go big,’’ as the speaker says, were stymied by the toughest issues: taxes and entitlements.

Democrats continued to insist on tax changes that would not pass muster in the conservative-dominated House, and Republicans wanted cuts to programs such as Medicare and Social Security that Obama and Senate Democrats would oppose.

“Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes. I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt limit increase,’’ Boehner said.

Without a lifting of the debt ceiling, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said that by Aug. 2, the nation will begin to default on the more than $14.3 trillion in outstanding debts the nation has collected after decades of runaway deficit spending.

The impasse leaves Obama and congressional negotiators back at the smaller package, which includes agency budget cuts and more modest changes to entitlement programs.

That package, which had been negotiated by Vice President Joe Biden and key GOP leaders, including House majority leader Eric Cantor, would come to somewhere between $2 trillion and $2.4 trillion in savings, allowing Congress to approve an extension of the federal debt ceiling into spring 2013.

Obama, whose aides had not yet responded to Boehner’s announcement at press time, had been cajoled by Boehner into pushing for what the speaker called “the big deal,’’ as opposed to the midrange package Biden and Cantor were assembling.

The larger package would have been the most significant compromise in taxes and spending of the past three decades, including cuts to Social Security and Medicare, reductions in Pentagon spending, and a large rewrite of the federal tax code.

The emerging deal, however, collapsed of its own ideological weight. Liberals were outraged at the proposals for entitlements, particularly a cut in the annual increase of Social Security benefits, and conservatives were opposed to the idea of raising federal revenues through the tax overhaul proposal, which they would have labeled one of the largest tax increases in history.

Democrats blasted Boehner’s actions.

“I really do think this is unfortunate. It’s very disappointing that the Republican fixation with protecting tax breaks for corporate special interests and the very wealthy has prevented them from agreeing to a broad and balanced deficit reduction plan that would be good for the country,’’ said Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland.

Last night’s announcement capped a whirlwind three weeks in which the president and speaker engaged in a series of meetings that culminated last week with their decision to push for the biggest possible debt deal.

Boehner’s decision makes tonight’s summit all the more critical, as Obama, Biden, and the congressional leaders expected to attend must decide the next steps to avoid the default process.

© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.

Canada Has Surplus of Medical Marijuana Licenses

Canada has an unprecedented program of dissemination of medical marijuana

NEWSru.com

July 6, 2011

The Government of Canada is going to create the country’s new system, which implies the use of medical marijuana, says French Tribune . Go to such a move has forced the government statistics.

Thus, the first 10 months of last year, Health Canada has come to 7385 applications for licenses for medical marijuana. However, only 4650 people managed to take advantage of all the benefits.

As a result, the government announced a new national program providing the population of marijuana. That is, people do not have to privately raise the plant. Now they can easily turn to a licensed manufacturing companies.

Meanwhile, Judge Donald Thalia called the program unconstitutional and issued an edict to the middle of this month to review the control of access to medical marijuana. Later date pushed back further due to this the need for strict laws and regulations.

Pakistan’s attitude towards terror has altered: Rao

[Peace between India and Pakistan is now within reach, but only if this reasonable approach is maintained.  It is of utmost importance to the people of planet Earth at this critical moment in human history that this particular nuclear conundrum be solved.  This peace is only possible if the two former adversaries stand resolutely together to thwart Imperial plans for the region.]

Press Trust Of India

New Delhi

Indian foreign secretary Nirupama Rao (L) shakes hands with her Pakistani counterpart Salman……

Pakistan’s attitude towards tackling terrorism has “altered”, a “concrete” development that India should take note of, foreign secretary Nirupama Rao has said. “I think the prism through which they see this issue has definitely been altered,” Rao told Karan Thapar on Devil’s Advocate

programme on CNN-IBN.

She was replying to a question on whether India saw a change in Pakistan’s attitude towards terrorism during the recently concluded foreign secretary-level talks.

Asked whether it was a positive development, Rao said it was an outcome that India must take note of.

“I think when they speak of the fact that non-state elements in this relationship need to be tackled, that we must look at safe havens and sanctuaries, that we must look at fake currency, we must look at all the aspects that are concerned with the business of terror, I think that is a concrete development,” she said.

Rao, however, said she would not expect Pakistani officials to talk about the strategic link between the Pakistani state and militancy and terror.

Asked whether her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir accepted the revelations made by Mumbai attacks case accused David Headley in a Chicago trial court, Rao said the strategic link between the Pakistani state and militancy and terror needed to be broken.

“Well, he is not going to say that in so many words to me. I think it would be unrealistic for me to expect that the foreign secretary of Pakistan is going to say that,” she said when asked whether Bashir admitted to the strategic link between the Pakistani state and terror outfits.

Israel is tearing apart the Jewish people

[In keeping with my policy of promoting peace through understanding, I offer the following article on the Jewish mind, with my accompanying clarifications, as a necessary step toward global understanding of the Palestinian issue.  The radical thinking of the Israeli government is causing an estrangement with the remainder of world Jewry, wherever they are to be found (mostly in the US, even though the numbers returning to Russia are increasing by the minute).  This separation in thinking between Israeli Jews and American Jews represents disillusionment with the Zionist ideals.  This is the only real "existential threat" to Israel's existence. 

This estrangement is a difference of opinions, between the basic liberal beliefs of the majority of non-Israeli Jews and the fascist militarist ideas being promoted in the name of Jewish "exceptionalism," which teaches that Jews are higher lifeforms (the only true humans) to the non-Jewish "goyim" (who are cattle). 

The Jewish writer of the following article builds on this idea of a growing separation, which will lead to either a violent dissolution of the "Jewish state," or the downsizing of Israel with the permanent foundation of the Palestinian state.  If the end result of this downsizing is the formation of an Israeli government dedicated to "Universalist values," then that should prove acceptable to all fair-minded observers:

"Universalism in its primary meaning refers to religious, theological, and philosophical concepts with universal ("applying to all") application or applicability....Judaism holds that God had entered into a covenant with all mankind as Noachides, and that Jews and non-Jews alike have a relationship with God.^"[8]   

Noachides, abide by the following Seven Laws of Noah:

1. Prohibition of Idolatry: You shall not have any idols before God.
2. Prohibition of Murder: You shall not murder. (Genesis 9:6)
3. Prohibition of Theft: You shall not steal.
4. Prohibition of Sexual immorality: You shall not commit any of a series of sexual prohibitions, which include adultery, incest, anal intercourse between men and bestiality.
5. Prohibition of Blasphemy: You shall not blaspheme God’s name.
6. Dietary Law: Do not eat flesh taken from an animal while it is still alive. (Genesis 9:4, as interpreted in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 59a))
7. Requirement to have just Laws: Set up a governing body of law (e.g. Courts)

As a religious person, I can find nothing on the surface in those Seven Laws that I can object to (not considering what might be hidden); I don’t know about the rest of you.  If the state of Israel was dedicated to the universal protection of the rights of every human being and it coexisted alongside the state of Palestine, then True Peace in the Middle East could be possible.  Such a reformed state could provide a shining example to the world, if it chose to do so.  The Christian in me says, Why wouldn’t we give them a second chance, along with the Palestinian people?  In such a theoretical, nearly ideal set-up, there would be no room for racist beliefs that condemn entire peoples for the evil works of a sinister minority.

Let us hope and pray that Zionist radicalism divides the Jewish people, so that reason and sanity can prevail.]

Israel has never had a government that so blatantly violates the core values of liberal democracy, which dismisses identities of 85% of the world’s Jewry.

By Carlo Strenger

In June last year, Peter Beinart published an article in the New York Review of Books that created quite a storm by pointing out the deep estrangement between the young generation of American Jews and Israel. A year later, it is time to take stock.

Unfortunately, the situation has only grown a lot worse. In my travels to Europe I speak to predominantly Jewish audiences, but also to non-Jews who care deeply about Israel. They voice their pain and anguish openly: They want to understand what has happened to Israel. They desperately want to stand by it, but they are, increasingly, at a loss of knowing how to do so.

	Evacuating settlers in 2005.
	Photo by: Nir Kafri

Their questions are simple. They know that Israel is located in one of the world’s most difficult neighborhoods; they have no illusions about the Iranian regime or Hezbollah; and they know the Hamas charter. But they don’t understand how any of this is connected with Israel’s settlement policies, the dispossession of Palestinian property in Jerusalem, and the utterly racist talk about the ‘Judaization’ of Jerusalem. They feel that they no longer have arguments, even words, to defend Israel.

Israel has never had a government that so blatantly violates the core values of liberal democracy. Never has a Knesset passed laws that are as manifestly racist as the current one. Israel has had foreign ministers who were unworldly and didn’t know English; but it has never had a foreign minister whose only goal is to pander to his right-wing constituency by flaunting his disdain for international law and the idea of human rights with such relish.

Moreover, there has never been a government so totally oblivious of its relation to world Jewry. It passes laws that increase the Orthodox establishment’s stranglehold on religious affairs and personal life – completely disregarding that 85 percent of world Jewry are not Orthodox – and simply dismissing their Jewish identities and their institutions. As a result, this majority of world Jewry feels Israel couldn’t care less about its values and identity.

Israel’s Orthodox establishment claims that by monopolizing conversion to Judaism and the laws of marriage, they are preventing a rift in the Jewish people. The exact opposite is true: It is Israel’s turn toward racism that extends not only toward its Arab citizens, but toward Ethiopian youth not accepted into schools in Petah Tikva, toward Sephardic girls not allowed to study in Haredi schools in Immanuel, that most Jews in the world cannot stand for. It is the unholy coalition between nationalism and Orthodoxy that is tearing the Jewish people apart.

The overwhelming majority of American and European Jews are deeply committed to Universalist values, and have been so for most of their existence. This commitment is not a fad or an attempt to be fashionable and politically correct. It is the deeply felt conclusion the majority of world Jewry draws from Jewish history: After all that has happened to us, we Jews must never, ever allow violation of universal human rights.

This is why Jews in the U.S. have been central in the Civil Rights movement; this is why Jews in Europe will never forget that only Universalist liberals stood by Alfred Dreyfus in 1890s France. For most Jews of the world, it is simply unfathomable: How can we, who have suffered from racial and religious discrimination, use language and hold views that – as Israel Prize laureate and historian of fascism Zeev Sternhell argued – were last held in the Western world by the Franco regime?

For most of world Jewry, the idea of Yiddishkeit in the second half of the 20th century meant that Jews must never compromise on the equality of human beings before the law and the inviolability of their rights. So how can they stand by a state that continues to pay rabbis who argue that Jewish life has a sanctity that doesn’t extend to gentiles, and that it is forbidden to rent property to Arabs?

In moments of despair, I try to remember that Israel’s move to the right is driven by fear and confusion, ruthlessly fanned by politicians whose hold on power depends on the panic of Israel’s citizens. I feel it can’t be true that the country that was supposed not only to be the homeland of the Jews, but a moral beacon, is descending into such darkness. I try to remember that such times of darkness do not reflect on the human quality of a whole nation; that countries like Spain, Greece and Portugal emerged from dark times into the free world; that even though the winds of right-wing nationalism are sweeping over Israel, it is still a democracy.

Sometimes, along with the majority of Jews committed to liberal and Universalist values, I feel as if I were simply in a bad dream; that when I wake up, Herzl’s vision of a Jewish state committed to the core values of liberalism will be the reality.

Taliban’s return and India’s concerns

[The greatest possible act of self-defense for India, as well as for Pakistan, would be for them to forge a peace treaty.  The stabilization of everything that the US and NATO has been driving to destabilize is the path to regional security.]

M.K. Bhadrakumar

While there is no evidence that Barack Obama consulted New Delhi about the impending shift in U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, India must now begin a ‘dialogue’ with the Taliban along with a policy to instil confidence in the Pakistani mind about our intentions.

The United States President, Barack Obama’s announcement regarding the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan was not India-specific, as compared to Washington’s initiative in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to bar the transfer of enrichment and reprocessing equipment and technology to New Delhi. But it is more lethal, casting a shadow on India’s regional strategies.

Why Mr. Obama took such a decision doesn’t actually need much explaining. Put simply, his sharp political instincts prevailed. He had a pledge to redeem; he sensed the public mood; he heard “bipartisan” opinion in Capitol Hill that the soldiers be brought home; he faces an adverse budgetary environment and he understood that his priority should be to mend the U.S. economy rather than wage wars in foreign lands. The “surge” may have made gains, arguably, but gains are reversible; so, what is the point? Meanwhile, Afghan opinion is turning against foreign occupation and the killing of Osama bin Laden offers a defining moment.

On the diplomatic front, regional allies proved exasperatingly difficult, while European allies got impatient to quit. The regional opinion militates against a long-term U.S. military presence, while the contradictions in intra-regional relationships do not lend easily to reconciliation. The foreign policy priorities need vastly more attention: exports and investment, upheaval in West Asia, China’s rise, etc.

There is no evidence that Mr. Obama consulted New Delhi about the impending shift in the U.S. strategy in India’s immediate neighbourhood. We need to calmly ponder over what the U.S. means when Mr. Obama calls India its “indispensable partner in the 21st century.” In the period ahead, keeping the dialogue process with Pakistan on course; pursuing normalisation of ties with China; consolidating the gains of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s path-breaking visit to Kabul — all these templates of our regional policy assume great importance. Indeed, the raison d’être of a “new thinking” in policymaking cannot but be stressed.

The implications of Mr. Obama’s drawdown decision are far-reaching. The U.S. has accepted the Taliban as being a part of the Afghan nation and concluded that it does not threaten America’s “homeland security.” No segment of the Taliban movement that is willing for reconciliation will be excluded. Mr. Obama expressed optimism about the peace process. He estimated that al-Qaeda is a spent force and any residual “war on terror” will be by way of exercising vigilance that it doesn’t rear its head again. The timeline for the drawdown — 10,000 troops by end-2011, 33,000 by mid-2012 and the bulk of the remaining 70,000 troops at a “steady pace” through 2013-14 — plus the change of command necessitated by David Petraeus’s departure in September as the new head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) hardly leaves scope for keeping a high tempo of security operations. Obviously, the Taliban has borne the brunt of the U.S. firepower and has survived.

The stunning geopolitical reality is that the U.S. is barely staving off defeat and is making its way out of the Hindu Kush in an orderly retreat. The Taliban responded to Mr. Obama’s announcement saying, “The solution for the Afghan crisis lies in the full withdrawal of all foreign troops immediately. Until this happens, our armed struggle will increase from day to day.” Again, Mr. Obama appears to be optimistic about the Kabul government’s ability to assume the responsibility of security by 2014.

Mr. Obama completely avoided mentioning an almost-forgotten pledge that the former U.S. President George W. Bush made in the halcyon days of the war, that the U.S. would someday consider a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan. He, instead, pleaded that this is “a time of rising debt and hard economic times at home” and he needs to concentrate on rebuilding America. The Afghans fear that western aid and projects would dry up. If that happens, Afghanistan will revert to the late 1990s when the Taliban regime first accepted the financial help offered by bin Laden. All hope now hinges on the international conference that Mr. Obama will be hosting in May next year in Chicago.

However, there is no need to press the panic button. A repetition of the civil war scenario of the 1990s appears a remote possibility. The Taliban’s ascendancy in the 1990s was more an outright Pakistani conquest of Afghanistan in which the Pakistani air force, artillery, armoured corps, regular officers and intelligence agencies directly participated. The Taliban was a cohesive movement. Besides, there were regional powers determined to provide assistance to the non-Pashtun groups. In all these respects, the situation is radically different today. Pakistan hadn’t yet known at that time the blowback of terrorism. The very fact that Pakistan learnt about the secret talks between the Taliban and U.S. representatives from news reports speaks volumes of its command and control of the Quetta Shura.

Pakistan cannot be so naïve as not to factor in the fact that a revitalised, triumphalist Taliban just across the Durand Line (which, by the way, has all but disappeared) could ultimately prove a headache for its own security. Pakistani commentators candidly admit that the Afghans deeply resent Pakistan’s interference. There has been an overall political awakening among the Afghan people and a replay of the old Pakistani policies will be challenged. The gravitas of Afghan domestic politics has shifted. Thus, all things taken into consideration, Pakistan will see the wisdom of allowing a kind of intra-Afghan “equilibrium” to develop rather than try to prescribe what is good for that country.

Mr. Karzai has proved to be a remarkably shrewd politician gifted with a high acumen to network and forge alliances. He has emerged as a pan-Afghan leader who maintains working relationships with influential figures cutting across ethnicity and regions — Mohammed Fahim, Karim Khalili, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Rasul Sayyaf, etc. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami, which is a Pashtun-dominated group antithetical to the Taliban, already forms a part of Mr. Karzai’s government. Mr. Karzai has his own bridges leading toward the Taliban camp to which he once belonged, after all. There will always be disgruntled elements, but then there are the traditional Afghan methods of patronage and accommodation. Mr. Karzai takes an active interest in regional affairs. His bonding with Pakistan and Iran shows that his political antennae are already probing for openings in anticipation of the U.S. withdrawal.

In this complex setting, India’s own policy orientations are realistic and near-optimal. The primacy on building warm and cordial ties with the government in Kabul; nurturing people-to-people ties; contributing significantly to reconstruction; non-interference in internal affairs; an aversion to Indian military deployment; a non-prescriptive approach to an Afghan settlement and the insistence on an “Afghan-led” reconciliation process; and, most important, the trust that Mr. Karzai knows the “red lines” — these parameters of policy are eminently sustainable.

However, a couple of points need to be made. India should establish communication lines with the Taliban — assuming, of course, it wants to talk with us. After all, we talked with Mr. Sayyaf, leader of the Ittehad, which Jalaluddin Haqqani served as commander. It is inconceivable that any Afghan could harbour ill will towards India and the Indian people. The rest is all the disposable stuff of how the Afghan has been manipulated by outsiders through the 30 years of civil war — including when he vandalised the Bamiyan statues. But in the kind of Afghanistan Mr. Karzai wants his country to return, it becomes possible for us also to rediscover the Afghan we knew before foreigners came and occupied his country. (Incidentally, this is also the basis of Mr. Karzai’s optimism when he reacted on hearing about Mr. Obama’s drawdown plan: “This soil can only be protected by the sons of Afghanistan. I congratulate the Afghan people for taking the responsibility for their country into their own hands … Today is a very happy day.”)

And, our “dialogue” with the Taliban must go hand in hand with a policy to do all we can by word and deed to instil confidence in the Pakistani mind about our intentions that for the foreseeable future, Afghanistan’s stabilisation can become a shared concern for the two countries. Much has changed already in the most recent months in the prevailing air. No one talks seriously that the drawback of Mr. Obama’s drawdown plan could be India-Pakistan “rivalry” in Afghanistan. There is actually no scope for zero-sum games, since Pakistan’s interests in Afghanistan are legitimate — and are reconcilable with India’s concerns.

Second, Indian diplomacy should utilise the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) process to evolve a new strategic culture of collective security for the region, which it lacks. Mr. Obama’s words should be properly understood, when he said that the U.S. can no more “over-extend … confronting every evil that can be found abroad.” As India and Pakistan move to a new trajectory of growth, a favourable regional environment becomes the imperative need. India can learn a lot from the Chinese “technique” of creating synergy between the SCO track and Beijing’s bilateral track with the Central Asian capitals — and with Moscow — which till a generation ago were weaned on unalloyed anti-China dogmas of the Soviet era. Indian diplomacy can do one better. It can adapt this “technique” to normalisation with Pakistan — and with China.

( The writer is a former diplomat.)

Spontaneous Creation?

Gunther Ostermann for Salem-News.com

“The universe can create itself spontaneously out of nothing and it has no creator” - Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking photo courtesy: wokay.com

(KELOWNA, B.C.) – There was and is, A CAUSE, prior to the big bang.

The prominent scientist Stephen Hawking warned humanity that, “We’re acting with reckless indifference to the future on planet earth. It will be difficult to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million.”

Why is humanity hell-bent on destroying the world? Has humanity lost its moral compass, if it ever had a real one? Numerous people, disappointed in church and religion, are embracing atheism, but in so doing throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Maybe the time has come to replace the archaic and man-made concept of God, with a new science based understanding. However, despite the fact that ten thousand scientists are working on the Large Hadron Collider, in trying to recreate the Big-Bang and looking for the God particle, the Higgs boson, by smashing subatomic particles together, not one scientist came out and admit, perhaps for fear of ridicule that, before the big bang, and as THE CAUSE, there was and is a Super-Intelligence, who is as invisible and intangible as is our mind, that is me, the I?

It may take many years before that happens, since even Stephen Hawking says, “The universe can create itself spontaneously out of nothing and it has no creator.” Wow! Is then the belief in God any less fantastic? Is it too much of a conjecture to presume that the big bang was designed, just like any seed, with the Anthropic principle, and the process of Creavolution, to produce in time, exactly what exists today?

Lastly, I add my own prophetic words from the 80s to Stephen Hawking’s…every year lost in curbing the violence of man against man and nature will require eons for the earth to heal itself, and nobody really knows the day of no return.

Oroginally published by: The Guardian Nigeria

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF RATIONAL HUMANISM

 

The ten rules of living and of social behaviour of
rational humanism for a more harmonious and just world

1- Proclaim the natural dignity and inherent worth of
all human beings, in all places and in all
circumstances.

2- Respect the life and property of others at all
times.

3- Practice tolerance and open-mindedness towards the
choices and life styles of others.

4- Share with those who are less fortunate and
mutually assist those who are in need of help.

5- Use neither lies, nor spiritual power, nor temporal
power to dominate and exploit others.

6- Rely on reason and science to understand the
Universe and to solve life’s problems, avoiding
religious and supernatural superstitions which numb
the mind and are an obstacle to thinking by oneself.

7- Conserve and improve the earth’s natural
environment —land, water, air and space—as humankind’s
common heritage.

8- Resolve differences and conflicts cooperatively
without resorting to violence or to wars.

9- Organize public affairs according to individual
freedom and responsability, through political and
economic democracy.

10- Develop one’s intelligence and talents through
education and effort, in order to reach fulfillment
and happiness, for the betterment of humanity and of
future generations.

Why India needs an Arab Spring

Does a failing democracy need a revolution, too?

Jason OverdorfMay 30, 2011 21:22

Indian students shout anti-corruption slogans in support of veteran Indian social activist, Anna Hazare at a garden in Amritsar on April 8, 2011. Indian social activist, Anna Hazare, who entered the fouth day of his indefinite hunger strike, has vowed to keep fasting to push for changes to a draft bill facilitating corruption complaints against the prime minister and cabinet. Hazare complained that the draft of the Lokpal (Ombudsman) Bill was formulated without the input of civil society groups and had been watered down by ministers. (NARINDER NANU/AFP/Getty Images)

India’s democratic institutions are failing just as miserably as governments from Tunisia to Libya, Ranjani Iyer Mohanty argues in the Atlantic. And as voting has failed to do the trick, an Arab Spring-style revolution is needed to initiate change.

Here’s Mohanty:

Those [same] failed government institutions, morally corrupt or at least morally inept, certainly exist here [in India] as well. Last year alone, the Indian government was implicated in corruption scams that amounted to billions of dollars swindled from the public. Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index ranks India at 87 — below Serbia, Colombia, and even China. Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, ranks 59. Even the families living under the overpass need to pay off the police to allow them to remain there.

India’s failed institutions also include those that fail in their role of looking after a large section of the population. Two formal reports have independently estimated the proportion of Indians living below the poverty line as 77 and 50 percent, though the Indian government touts a third report, which found a more palatable 37 percent. But even this figure would put some 420 million Indians in poverty. Other statistics are equally galling. Even among BRICS — the informal community of developing economies Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — India lags behind the other nations in, for example, literacy among women and girls in secondary school. The latest Global Hunger Index ranks India as 67 out of 84 countries — far below neighbors China at number 9, Sri Lanka at 39, Pakistan at 52, and Nepal at 56. UNICEF reports that some 56 percent of Indian adolescent girls are anemic and 42 percent of children under the age of five are underweight. And food prices are rising.

There is a growing disconnect between India’s affluent and its poor. One man who has lived in Delhi all his life told me icily that there are no beggars on the streets here. Is he being defensive, or has he just stopped noticing them? An elderly woman complains that servants are no longer what they used to be, i.e., content with their lot. They are demanding time off, asking for raises, and trying to buy a scooter. A well-to-do Indian family of four could easily spend on one dinner at a nice restaurant the equivalent of their housekeeper’s monthly wages. A coffee in one of the city’s elegant five-star hotels costs the same as one day’s wages for the woman digging the ditch just outside in the sun, while her toddler sits bare-bottomed on the pile of rubble.

I have some sympathy for this view, of course. Democracy in India can seem like a revolving door — as one corrupt and incompetent pol clocks out, another one clocks in, and no proof of wrongdoing is enough to kill a career.  But Mohanty may be looking to the wrong revolutionaries for a model. What’s India after a dramatic call against corruption pulls down the government?  Some months back I was reading similar articles about Pakistan…. Why can’t Pakistan have a jasmine revolution etc.  I said, it has, at least three times. Most recently, the anti-corruption lobby got itself General Pervez Musharraf.  Or maybe most recently the revolutionaries got rid of Musharraf and got Asif Ali Zardari.  But you see where I’m going here…

I’ll go out on a limb and say the revolution is underway in India, but the one that will make the difference isn’t being fought in the jungles with the Maoists or on the streets with Anna Hazare’s corruption protesters.  It’s being fought by newly emerging civil society groups that are creating the framework of democracy that is too often ignored — institutions that are providing information that the media has not about the financial assets and activities of politicians, independent data and new ideas about India’s big problems (poverty, food, education) and so on

The Race for Space Solar Energy

William John Cox

The failures of the General Electric nuclear reactors in Japan to safely shut down during the 9.0 Tahoku earthquake, following in the wake of the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the deadly methane gas explosion in Massey’s West Virginia coal mine, conclusively demonstrate the grave dangers to human society posed by current energy production methods.
The radiation plume from melting reactor cores and the smoke of burning spent fuel rods threaten the lives of the unborn; yet, they point in the direction of the only logical alternative to these failed policies – the generation of an inexhaustible, safe, pollution-free supply of energy from outer space.
Presently, only the top industrialized nations have the technological, industrial and economic power to compete in the race for space solar energy. In spite of, and perhaps because of, the current disaster, Japan occupies the inside track, as it is the only nation that has a dedicated space solar energy program and which is highly motivated to change directions. China, which has launched astronauts into an earth orbit and is rapidly become the world’s leader in the production of wind and solar generation products, will undoubtedly become a strong competitor. However, the United States, which should have every advantage in the race, is most likely to stumble out of the gate and waste the best chance it has to solve its economic, energy, political and military problems.
A Miraculous Source of Abundant Energy
Space-solar energy is the greatest source of untapped energy which could, potentially, completely solve the world’s energy and greenhouse gas emission problems.
The technology currently exists to launch solar-collector satellites into geostationary orbits around the Earth to convert the Sun’s radiant energy into electricity 24 hours a day and to safely transmit the electricity by microwave beams to rectifying antennas on Earth.
Following its proposal by Dr. Peter Glaser in 1968, the concept of solar power satellites was extensively studied by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). By 1981, the organizations determined that the idea was a high-risk venture; however, they recommended further study.
With increases in electricity demand and costs, NASA took a “fresh look” at the concept between 1995 and 1997. The NASA study envisioned a trillion-dollar project to place several dozen solar-power satellites in geostationary orbits by 2050, sending between two gigawatts and five gigawatts of power to Earth.
The NASA effort successfully demonstrated the ability to transmit electrical energy by microwaves through the atmosphere; however, the study’s leader, John Mankins, now says the program “has fallen through the cracks because no organization is responsible for both space programs and energy security.”
The project may have remained shelved except for the military’s need for sources of energy in its campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the cost of gasoline and diesel exceeds $400 a gallon. A report by the Department of Defense’s National Security Space Office in 2007 recommended that the U.S. “begin a coordinated national program” to develop space-based solar power.
There are three basic engineering problems presented in the deployment of a space-based solar power system: the size, weight and capacity of solar collectors to absorb energy; the ability of robots to assemble solar collectors in outer space; and the cost and reliability of lifting collectors and robots into space.
Two of these problems have been substantially solved since space-solar power was originally proposed. New thin-film advances in the design of solar collectors have steadily improved, allowing for increases in the efficiency of energy conversion and decreases in size and weight. At the same time, industrial robots have been greatly improved and are now used extensively in heavy manufacturing to perform complex tasks.
The remaining problem is the expense of lifting equipment and materials into space. The last few flights of the space shuttle this year will cost $20,000 per kilogram of payload to move satellites into orbit and resupply the space station.
It has been estimated that economic viability of space solar energy would require a reduction in the payload cost to less than $200 per kilogram and the total expense, including delivery and assembly in orbit, to less than $3,500 per kilogram.
Although there are substantial costs associated with the development of space-solar power, it makes far more sense to invest precious public resources in the development of an efficient and reliable power supply for the future, rather than to waste U.S. tax dollars on an ineffective missile defense system, an ego trip to Mars, or $36 billion in risky loan guarantees by the DOE to the nuclear power industry.
With funding for the space shuttle ending next year and for the space station in 2017, the United States must decide upon a realistic policy for space exploration, or else it will be left on the ground by other nations, which are rapidly developing futuristic space projects.
China is currently investing $35 billion of its hard-currency reserves in the development of energy-efficient green technology, and has become the world’s leading producer of solar panels. In addition, China has aggressively moved into space by orbiting astronauts and by demonstrating a capability to destroy the satellites of other nations.
Over the past two years, Japan has committed $21 billion to secure space-solar energy. By 2030, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency plans to “put into geostationary orbit a solar-power generator that will transmit one gigawatt of energy to Earth, equivalent to the output of a large nuclear power plant.” Japanese officials estimate that, ultimately, they will be able to deliver electricity at a cost of $0.09 per kilowatt-hour, which will be competitive with all other sources.
A Consortium for Peace
President Kennedy once said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.” The United States readily achieved that objective and, effectively, won the Cold War. A similar challenge is now presented in the race for space solar energy. What, if anything, will President Obama say or do?
Rather than a competition, however, the United States, China, Japan, and perhaps Russia, should organize a public service consortium to cooperatively produce energy from outer space.
Such a consortium could take advantage of the unique abilities of each nation to collectively produce space-solar energy, and it would avoid private corporate domination over the distribution of a product that is essential to human civilization.
A Space-Solar Energy Consortium would be a giant step toward world peace and a small leap into the universe of unlimited and unimaginable futures that surround and await us.
William John Cox is a retired prosecutor and public interest lawyer, author and political activist. His efforts to promote a peaceful political evolution can be found at VotersEvolt.com, his writings are collected at WilliamJohnCox.com, and he can be contacted at u2cox@msn.com.

Merkel Orders Shutdown of 7 Nuclear Plants

Mon, 03/14/2011 – 06:34 —

Chancellor Angela Merkel shut down seven nuclear power plants  following the meltdown at Japanese reactors and protests against nuclear energy in Germany.

Merkel said she ordered an investigation that would take three months to complete before returning to its plans to extend the running time of stations.

She said that this would mean that the seven oldest reactors will be turned off, at least temporarily, almost immediately.

Merkel said that the risks of a meltdown at the Fukushima atomic reactors in Japan, triggered by the massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami in the region, had shown the world that nuclear safety should be reevaluated.

Over the weekend, tens of thousands of Germans joined hands and called for an immediate nuclear shut-down.   Even though Germany and Europe are unlikely to experience a magnitude 8.9 earthquake or a tsunami, Merkel said, the Fukushima example had shown that Japanese state-of-the-art safety precautions were not infallible.

“That changes the situation, even in Germany. We have a new situation, and this must be analyzed wholeheartedly, without reserve and completely. Only then can decisions follow,”Merkel said.

She appeared alongside the leader of her Free Democrat coalition ally, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, then alluded to the extra safety checks commissioned for all 17 of the country’s nuclear power plants on Saturday, promising that there would be “no taboos” in these inspections.

About 40,000 people formed a human chain from the Neckarwestheim nuclear plant to the city of Stuttgart on Saturday, the news agency AP reported.

The activists, holding flags with slogans reading “Nuclear power! No thanks,” were protesting against the German government’s decision to extend the operational life of several of the country’s older nuclear power plants, the wire service said.

A government crisis team is also set to meet in Berlin to discuss the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the German weekly Der Spiegelreported.

The Fukushima plant in Japan was damaged by Friday’s 8.9-magnitude earthquake, and due to a radiation leak, radioactivity at the facility is reportedly now 20 times higher than normal levels.

Germany had previously decided to shut down all its nuclear plants by 2021, but in October 2010 it decided to extend the life of 17 nuclear power plants to 12 more years.

For decades there has been a stable and absolute majority in the polls in Germany against the use of nuclear energy. And in the last year there was a new upturn of the movement with a new generation of young activists.

The mobilizations of last year against the transports of nuclear waste had been the biggest for more than 15 years.

The former government of the Social Democrats and Green Party some years ago passed a law, which limited the running time of the existing nuclear plants.

But the law made it easy for the following government to change it.So the current government argued, that the nuclear plants are needed in order to fight climate change.

Japan radiation levels–(updated daily)

Followed a link to this really useful LINK,

Japan radiation levels

I have posted in my “LINKS,”  also pasted permanently on right sidebar.

Wave and tidal power

last updated 07/00

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Originally appeared in FRR issue:September 1998, web version updated July 2000
Keywords: wave power, tidal power, oceans, currents, waves, electricity generation
Sources: The New Scientist, 16 May and 20 June 1998, Professional Engineering 10 June 1998, Renewable Energy, Sep-Dec 1996, vol. 9 No. 1-4, pp.870-874, Blue Energy Canada Website at http://www.bluenergy.com.

[Additional material from The New Scientist, 3 October 1998, Renewable Energy 2000 (held at Brighton, England July 2-4 2000), and the wavegen website (http://www.wavegen.co.uk) have been added to the original printed report.]

Abstract

Generating electricity from the oceans has been widely discussed for 40 years. Time and again attempts have been made to harness the both wave and tidal power, usually with little success. However, with advances in engineering in the past few years, the oceans have become an economically feasible source of energy.

Introduction

The World electrical energy market is at $800-billion-a-year(US) and rising. It has been estimated that ” there are 2 billion people who still lack electricity today, and the world demand in developing countries is doubling every eight years” (World Watch Institute, May 1997). In order to meet that demand, while limiting production of green house gases, renewable energy sources must be developed.

The sea has long been seen as a source of energy. In the middle ages (1200-1500 AD) farmers used to trap sea water in mill ponds and use it to power water mills as the tide dropped. Over the last fifty years, engineers have begun to look at tidal and wave power on a larger, industrial scale. However, until the last few years, particularly in Europe, wave power and tidal power were both seen as uneconomic. Although some pilot projects showed that energy could be generated, they also showed that, even if cost of the energy generated was not considered, there was a real problem making equipment which could withstand the extremely harsh marine environment.

In the late 1990s, it has become clear that technology has advanced to the point where reliable and cheap electricity from the oceans is becoming a real possibility. The UK will have its first electricity supplied to the national supply by the year 2000, and other countries are seriously considering doing likewise.

Wave Power I – sea-based devices

Europe, and in particular the United Kingdom, are looking again at wave power. A recent review by the government has shown that there are now types of wave power devices which can produce electricity at a cost of under $US0.10/kWh, the point at which production of electricity becomes economically viable. The most efficient of the devices, the “Salter ”Duck can produce electricity for less than $US0.05/kWh.

The “Salter ”Duck was developed in the 1970s by Professor Stephen Salter at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland (email Shs@srv1.mech.ed.ac.uk) and generates electricity by bobbing up and down with the waves. Although it can produce energy extremely efficiently it was effectively killed off in the mid 1980s when a European Union report miscalculated the cost of the electricity it produced by a factor of 10. In the last few years, the error has been realised, and interest in the Duck is becoming intense.

Operation of the Salter Duck

©1996 Ramage

The “Clam” is another device which, Like the “Salter ”Duck can make energy from sea swell. The Clam is an arrangement of six airbags mounted around a hollow circular spine. As waves impact on the structure air is forced between the six bags via the hollow spine which is equipped with self-rectifying turbines. Even allowing for cabling to shore, it is calculated that the Clam can produce energy for around $US0.06kW/hr.

Wave Power II- Shore based systems

Where the shoreline has suitable topography, cliff-mounted oscillating water column (OWC) generators can be installed. OWC systems have a number of advantages over the Clam and the Duck, not the least of which is the fact that generators and all cabling are shore-based, making maintenance much cheaper.

The OWC works on a simple principle. As an incoming wave causes the water level in the unit’s main chamber to rise (see diagram), air is forced up a funnel which houses a Well’s counter-rotating turbine. As the wave retreats, air is sucked down into the main chamber again. The Well’s turbine has been developed to spin in the same direction, whichever way air is flowing, in order to maximise efficiency. Although most previous OWC systems have had vertical water columns, that in LIMPET is angled at 45° – which wave tank test show to be more efficient.

OWC schematic

OWC machines have already been tested at a number of sites, including Japan and Norway. A commercial-scale (500 kW) installation is due to be commissioned on the Scottish Island of Islay in September 2000. The Islay OWC (known as LIMPET) is a joint venture between Queens University, WAVEGEN, Instituto Superior Técnico (Portugal), the European Union and Charles Brand Engineering. It is the direct successor of an experimental 75 kW turbine (built by researchers from the Queen’s University of Belfast) which operated on the island between 1991 and 1999. Another LIMPET is currently being developed (at pilot-plant scale) on the Azores.

Construction of OWCs

One of the great problems with shoreline-based OWCs is their construction, which must necessarily take place on rocky shores exposed to wind and waves. In the case of the prototype Islay OWC system it was relatively easy to build a temporary dam on the shoreline to protect the unit. However, LIMPET is a much larger system, with a lip 20m wide. It was therefore ultimately decided to build the unit back from the coastline and remove a bund to make the system fully operational (see figure, below).

Installing an OWC unit

However, both OWC-systems and ocean-wave systems suffer from trying to harness violent forces. The first Norwegian OWC was ripped off a cliff-face during a storm, the Islay station is completely submerged under storm conditions. Thus, researchers are looking at other ways of generating electricity from the ocean, and are increasingly turning to tidally-generated coastal currents.

Power from tidally-generated coastal currents

Over the past forty years, there has been constant interest in harnessing tidal power. Initially, this interest focused on estuaries, where large volumes of water pass through narrow channels generating high current velocities. Engineers felt that blocking estuaries with a barrage and forcing water through turbines would be an effective way to generate electricity. This was proved by construction of a tidal barrage at St. Malo in France in the mid 1960s. La Rance tidal power plant still provides 90% of Brittany’s, and a major refurbishment program (due for completion in 2007) means it will continue in operation well into the new millenium.

Despite the success of La Rance, no other major tidal barrages have been built since, due in some part to environmental concerns. Barages present a barrier to navigation by boats and fish alike; reduced tidal range (difference between high and low water levels) can destroy much of the inter-tidal habitat used by wading birds; and sediment trapped behind the barrage could also reduce the volume of the estuary over time. By the early 1990s, interest in estuarine-derived tidal power had largely ceased, and scientists and engineers began to look at the potential of tidally-generated coastal currents instead.

As tides ebb and flow, currents are often generated in coastal waters (quite often in areas far-removed from bays and estuaries). In many places the shape of the seabed forces water to flow through narrow channels, or around headlands (much like the wind howls through narrow valleys and around hills). However, sea water has a much higher density than air, meaning that currents of 5-8 knots generate as much energy as winds of much higher velocity. In addition, unlike the wind rushing through a valley or over hilltops, tidally-generated coastal currents are predictable. The tide comes in and out every twelve hours, resulting in currents which reach peak velocity four times every day. Two rival technologies — tidal fences and tidal turbines — are now being developed to catch the energy of these currents.

Coastal currents are strongest at the margins of the world’s larger oceans. A review of likely tidal power sites in the late 1980s estimated the energy resource was in excess of 330,000 MW. South East Asia is one area where it is likely such currents could be exploited for energy. In particular, the Chinese and Japanese coasts, and the large number of straits between the islands of the Philippines are suitable for development of power generation from coastal currents.

Tidal Fences

Tidal fences (see figure 1) are effectively barrages which completely block a channel. As discussed above, if deployed across the mouth of an estuary they can be very environmentally destructive. However, in the 1990s their deployment in channels between small islands or in straights between the mainland and island has increasingly been considered as a viable option for generation of large amounts of electricity.

A Tidal Fence

The advantage of a tidal fence is that all the electrical equipment (generators and transformers) can be kept high above the water. Also, by decreasing the cross-section of the channel, current velocity through the turbines is significantly increased.

The first large-scale commercial fences are likely to be built in South East Asia. The most advanced plan is for a scheme for a fence across the Dalupiri Passage between the islands of Dalpiri and Samar in the Philippines, agreed between the Philippines Government and Blue Energy Engineering Company of Vancouver, Canada in late 1997. The site, on the south side of the San Bernardino Strait, is approx. 41 m deep (with a relatively flat bottom) and has a peak tidal current of about 8 knots. As a result, the fence is expected to generate up to 2200 MW of peak power (with a base daily average of 1100 MW).

Once given final government approval (expected before the end of 2000), work will begin on a 4km-long structure designed to withstand typhoon winds of 150 mph and tsunami waves of 7 meters. The Dalupiri Ocean Power Plant will utilize 274 ocean-class Davis Turbines, each generating from 7MW to 14 MW. However, the $US2.8 billion project is just the first phase one of a much-larger proposed Build Own Operate Transfer (BOOT) project that will be transferred to the Philippines after 25 years. Used to generate large scale renewable energy, the San Bernardino passage could help the Philippines to become a net exporter of electrical power.

The modular nature of the Blue Energy Power System allows for power to be generated in the fourth year of the project, with the installation of the first module in the chain, which gradually increases to full capacity by project completion in year six. Once begun, this project will be one of the largest renewable energy developments in the world.

Tidal Turbines

Tidal turbines are the chief competition to the tidal fence. Looking like an underwater wind turbine they offer a number of advantages over the tidal fence. They are less disruptive to wildlife, allow small boats to continue to use the area, and have much lower material requirements than the fence.

Tidal turbines function well where coastal currents run at 2-2.5 m/s (slower currents tend to be uneconomic while larger ones put a lot of stress on the equipment). Such currents provide an energy density four times greater than air, meaning that a 15m diameter turbine will generate as much energy as a 60m diameter windmill. In addition, tidal currents are both predictable and reliable, a feature which gives them an advantage over both wind and solar systems. The tidal turbine also offers significant environmental advantages over wind and solar systems; the majority of the assembly is hidden below the waterline, and all cabling is along the seabed.

There are many sites around the world where tidal turbines could be effectively installed. The ideal site is close to shore (within 1 km) in water depths of about 20-30m. Peter Fraenkel, director of UK-based Marine Current Turbines, believes the best sites could generate more than 10 megawatts of energy per square kilometer. The European Union has already identified 106 sites which would be suitable for the turbines, 42 of them around the UK. Further afield, Fraenkel believes the Philippines, Indonesia, China and Japan could all develop underwater turbine farms.

Fraenkel intends to deploy a commercial-scale prototype turbine off the southwest coast of England in the summer of 2001. It will generate 300 kW (enough to power a small village). Although the cost of energy from the prototype turbine will be $US0.10/kW, costs will drop as the technology matures. Fraenkel hopes that the first “turbine farm” (£MW) will operational by 2004 and aims to have 300MW capacity being installed every year by 2010.

Artist’s impression of turbine farm

image © marine current turbines ltd.

Conclusions

Wave power (and tidal power) are beginning to come into their own. They have many benefits, including:

• Renewable and sustainable resource
• Reduces dependence upon fossil fuels
• Produces no liquid or solid pollution
• Little visual impact
• Construction of large scale offshore devices results in new areas of sheltered water, attractive for fish, sea birds, seals and seaweed
• Present no difficulty to migrating fish (except tidal fences)
• Shelter the coast, useful in harbour areas or erosion zones
• Resource exists on a worldwide scale from deep ocean waters
• Short time scale between investing in the modular construction and benefiting from the revenue

Clearly there are still technical difficulties to overcome, but in the next few years, countries will begin to see wave power connected to national supplies. It will be a big market.

Good morning World, Time for Our Wake-Up Call

Good morning World…

“They lie to make money (profit motive) for themselves and/or their corporate and military pals, who (in turn) return the favor (give support) in some form or other. They lie to not alarm the public, especially in instances wherein not much can be done to stop some form of damage. They lie to push forward an agenda wherein they don’t care about whatever happens to some group of people (i.e., ones in coal mining communities, near nuclear plants and gas fracking operations, in war zones near oil fields, etc.) as long as the corpocrats who own the businesses can, literally and figuratively, make a killing on behalf of self-enriching economic gains. … Some of these people, of course, love the power and control affiliated with such operations while others consider the loss experienced by some (such as those near nuclear plants) a reasonable exchange for some good (i.e., electricity provision) for the social whole. … For example, what would happen if the American people were told that they need to cut back on energy use (of which around 78 % is provided by fossil fuels), not use oil and so on? … If the public were told the truth about nuclear energy and nuclear bombs, the resultant backlash would be considerable. So it’s better, from the power elites’ point of view, to keep everyone dumb and ignorant for the most part. … No amount of radiation is safe. It is a ticking time bomb in all of us. Yet some people are more prone to cancers, etc., than others. For example, some of the babies born in DU laden ME are okay or, seemingly, okay at birth. … Some people survived (until old age) being somewhat near Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and other nuclear troubles while others did not. … Imagine what would happen were the Japanese government to tell everyone to leave Japan from Tokyo northward? Where would they go? How would they be evacuated? What about food and water? What about insurance for irradiated properties and loss of businesses? What would be the effect on the worldwide economy? (Many major businesses are closed in Japan now, such as the worldwide main Toyota plant that was somewhat near one of the hydrogen blast points.) … Imagine the pandemonium and assorted impacts if the U.S. west coast people were told the truth about their nuclear plants on fault lines or about a coming radiation cloud from Japan? … So the governments lie and lie again. Big business lies and lies again. The public is just fodder and always has been. .. It is, in large measure, a way to keep everything (including their plans and policies) going as usal. Nothing should, according to the corpocratic rulers, disrupt overall economic and social agendas except as minimally as possible.”

Peace and hugs,

E.

“Nuclear Meltdown In Japan”–Stephen Lendman

Nuclear Meltdown In Japan

By Stephen Lendman

13 March, 2011
Countercurrents.org

For years, Helen Caldicott warned it’s coming. In her 1978 book, “Nuclear Madness,” she said:

“As a physician, I contend that nuclear technology threatens life on our planet with extinction. If present trends continue, the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink will soon be contaminated with enough radioactive pollutants to pose a potential health hazard far greater than any plague humanity has ever experienced.”

More below on the inevitable dangers from commercial nuclear power proliferation, besides added military ones.

On March 11, New York Times writer Martin Fackler headlined, “Powerful Quake and Tsunami Devastate Northern Japan,” saying:

“The 8.9-magnitude earthquake (Japan’s strongest ever) set off a devastating tsunami that sent walls of water (six meters high) washing over coastal cities in the north.” According to Japan’s Meteorological Survey, it was 9.0.

The Sendai port city and other areas experienced heavy damage. “Thousands of homes were destroyed, many roads were impassable, trains and buses (stopped) running, and power and cellphones remained down. On Saturday morning, the JR rail company” reported three trains missing. Many passengers are unaccounted for.

Striking at 2:46PM Tokyo time, it caused vast destruction, shook city skyscrapers, buckled highways, ignited fires, terrified millions, annihilated areas near Sendai, possibly killed thousands, and caused a nuclear meltdown, its potential catastrophic effects far exceeding quake and tsunami devastation, almost minor by comparison under a worst case scenario.

On March 12, Times writer Matthew Wald headlined, “Explosion Seen at Damaged Japan Nuclear Plant,” saying:

“Japanese officials (ordered evacuations) for people living near two nuclear power plants whose cooling systems broke down,” releasing radioactive material, perhaps in far greater amounts than reported.

NHK television and Jiji said the 40-year old Fukushima plant’s outer structure housing the reactor “appeared to have blown off, which could suggest the containment building had already been breached.” Japan’s nuclear regulating agency said radioactive levels inside were 1,000 times above normal.

Reuters said the 1995 Kobe quake caused $100 billion in damage, up to then the most costly ever natural disaster. This time, from quake and tsunami damage alone, that figure will be dwarfed. Moreover, under a worst case core meltdown, all bets are off as the entire region and beyond will be threatened with permanent contamination, making the most affected areas unsafe to live in.

On March 12, Stratfor Global Intelligence issued a “Red Alert: Nuclear Meltdown at Quake-Damaged Japanese Plant,” saying:

Fukushima Daiichi “nuclear power plant in Okuma, Japan, appears to have caused a reactor meltdown.” Stratfor downplayed its seriousness, adding that such an event “does not necessarily mean a nuclear disaster,” that already may have happened – the ultimate nightmare short of nuclear winter.

According to Stratfor, “(A)s long as the reactor core, which is specifically designed to contain high levels of heat, pressure and radiation, remains intact, the melted fuel can be dealt with. If the (core’s) breached but the containment facility built around (it) remains intact, the melted fuel can be….entombed within specialized concrete” as at Chernobyl in 1986.

In fact, that disaster killed nearly one million people worldwide from nuclear radiation exposure. In their book titled, “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment,” Alexey Yablokov, Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko said:

“For the past 23 years, it has been clear that there is a danger greater than nuclear weapons concealed within nuclear power. Emissions from this one reactor exceeded a hundred-fold the radioactive contamination of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

“No citizen of any country can be assured that he or she can be protected from radioactive contamination. One nuclear reactor can pollute half the globe. Chernobyl fallout covers the entire Northern Hemisphere.”

Stratfor explained that if Fukushima’s floor cracked, “it is highly likely that the melting fuel will burn through (its) containment system and enter the ground. This has never happened before,” at least not reported. If now occurring, “containment goes from being merely dangerous, time consuming and expensive to nearly impossible,” making the quake, aftershocks, and tsunamis seem mild by comparison. Potentially, millions of lives will be jeopardized.

Japanese officials said Fukushima’s reactor container wasn’t breached. Stratfor and others said it was, making the potential calamity far worse than reported. Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said the explosion at Fukushima’s Saiichi No. 1 facility could only have been caused by a core meltdown. In fact, 3 or more reactors are affected or at risk. Events are fluid and developing, but remain very serious. The possibility of an extreme catastrophe can’t be discounted.

Moreover, independent nuclear safety analyst John Large told Al Jazeera that by venting radioactive steam from the inner reactor to the outer dome, a reaction may have occurred, causing the explosion.

“When I look at the size of the explosion,” he said, “it is my opinion that there could be a very large leak (because) fuel continues to generate heat.”

Already, Fukushima way exceeds Three Mile Island that experienced a partial core meltdown in Unit 2. Finally it was brought under control, but coverup and denial concealed full details until much later.

According to anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman, Japan’s quake fallout may cause nuclear disaster, saying:

“This is a very serious situation. If the cooling system fails (apparently it has at two or more plants), the super-heated radioactive fuel rods will melt, and (if so) you could conceivably have an explosion,” that, in fact, occurred.

As a result, massive radiation releases may follow, impacting the entire region. “It could be, literally, an apocalyptic event. The reactor could blow.” If so, Russia, China, Korea and most parts of Western Asia will be affected. Many thousands will die, potentially millions under a worse case scenario, including far outside East Asia.

Moreover, at least five reactors are at risk. Already, a 20-mile wide radius was evacuated. What happened in Japan can occur anywhere. Yet Obama’s proposed budget includes $36 billion for new reactors, a shocking disregard for global safety.

Calling Fukushima an “apocalyptic event,” Wasserman said “(t)hese nuclear plants have to be shut,” let alone budget billions for new ones. It’s unthinkable, he said. If a similar disaster struck California, nuclear fallout would affect all America, Canada, Mexico, Central America, and parts of South America.

Nuclear Power: A Technology from Hell

Nuclear expert Helen Caldicott agrees, telling this writer by phone that a potential regional catastrophe is unfolding. Over 30 years ago, she warned of its inevitability. Her 2006 book titled, “Nuclear Power is Not the Answer” explained that contrary to government and industry propaganda, even during normal operations, nuclear power generation causes significant discharges of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as hundreds of thousands of curies of deadly radioactive gases and other radioactive elements into the environment every year.

Moreover, nuclear plants are atom bomb factories. A 1000 megawatt reactor produces 500 pounds of plutonium annually. Only 10 are needed for a bomb able to devastate a large city, besides causing permanent radiation contamination.

Nuclear Power not Cleaner and Greener

Just the opposite, in fact. Although a nuclear power plant releases no carbon dioxide (CO2), the primary greenhouse gas, a vast infrastructure is required. Called the nuclear fuel cycle, it uses large amounts of fossil fuels.

Each cycle stage exacerbates the problem, starting with the enormous cost of mining and milling uranium, needing fossil fuel to do it. How then to dispose of mill tailings, produced in the extraction process. It requires great amounts of greenhouse emitting fuels to remediate.

Moreover, other nuclear cycle steps also use fossil fuels, including converting uranium to hexafluoride gas prior to enrichment, the enrichment process itself, and conversion of enriched uranium hexafluoride gas to fuel pellets. In addition, nuclear power plant construction, dismantling and cleanup at the end of their useful life require large amounts of energy.

There’s more, including contaminated cooling water, nuclear waste, its handling, transportation and disposal/storage, problems so far unresolved. Moreover, nuclear power costs and risks are so enormous that the industry couldn’t exist without billions of government subsidized funding annually.

The Unaddressed Human Toll from Normal Operations

Affected are uranium miners, industry workers, and potentially everyone living close to nuclear reactors that routinely emit harmful radioactive releases daily, harming human health over time, causing illness and early death.

The link between radiation exposure and disease is irrefutable, depending only on the amount of cumulative exposure over time, Caldicott saying:

“If a regulatory gene is biochemically altered by radiation exposure, the cell will begin to incubate cancer, during a ‘latent period of carcinogenesis,’ lasting from two to sixty years.”

In fact, a single gene mutation can prove fatal. No amount of radiation exposure is safe. Moreover, when combined with about 80,000 commonly used toxic chemicals and contaminated GMO foods and ingredients, it causes 80% of known cancers, putting everyone at risk everywhere.

Further, the combined effects of allowable radiation exposure, uranium mining, milling operations, enrichment, and fuel fabrication can be devastating to those exposed. Besides the insoluble waste storage/disposal problem, nuclear accidents happen and catastrophic ones are inevitable.

Inevitable Meltdowns

Caldicott and other experts agree they’re certain in one or more of the hundreds of reactors operating globally, many years after their scheduled shutdown dates unsafely. Combined with human error, imprudently minimizing operating costs, internal sabotage, or the effects of a high-magnitude quake and/or tsunami, an eventual catastrophe is certain.

Aging plants alone, like Japan’s Fukushima facility, pose unacceptable risks based on their record of near-misses and meltdowns, resulting from human error, old equipment, shoddy maintenance, and poor regulatory oversight. However, under optimum operating conditions, all nuclear plants are unsafe. Like any machine or facility, they’re vulnerable to breakdowns, that if serious enough can cause enormous, possibly catastrophic, harm.

Add nuclear war to the mix, also potentially inevitable according to some experts, by accident or intent, including Steven Starr saying:

“Only a single failure of nuclear deterrence is required to start a nuclear war,” the consequences of which “would be profound, potentially killing “tens of millions of people, and caus(ing) long-term, catastrophic disruptions of the global climate and massive destruction of Earth’s protective ozone layer. The result would be a global nuclear famine that could kill up to one billion people.”

Worse still is nuclear winter, the ultimate nightmare, able to end all life if it happens. It’s nuclear proliferation’s unacceptable risk, a clear and present danger as long as nuclear weapons and commercial dependency exist.

In 1946, Einstein knew it, saying:

“Our world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing the power to make great decisions for good and evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

He envisioned two choices – abolish all forms of nuclear power or face extinction. No one listened. The Doomsday Clock keeps ticking.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

I Am a Blasphemer

I Am a Blasphemer

By Sana Saleem

I am a blasphemer because my heart cries every time a human is

slaughtered in the name of religion

I am in shambles whenever the ‘up holders’ of religion use it to

justify murder.

I am a blasphemer because my tears do not recognize the difference

between an Ahmedi, Shia, Wahabbi, Barelvi, Christian, Hindu, Muslim

or an Atheist

It pains to witness the mosques being used as the barracks of

demagogues instead of as a place to unite believers in remembrance

and prayer.

I am a blasphemer because my faith in God is stronger than any

offensive word, or action committed. I refuse to be offended by

people who disagree with me.

I am appalled when sermons, meant to deliver messages of faith, call

out for blood.

I am a blasphemer because inciting violence in the name of Islam

offends me more than caricatures.

I disown every single sermon, fatwa, and cleric that uses my

religion, my scripture, and my hadiths to validate their thirst for

authority.

I am a blasphemer because I choose to speak; to question.

I want to ask, why?

Why are people allowed to silence words with bullets?

I want to ask, what?

What religion, ideology or culture justifies celebrating cold

blooded murder?

I want to ask, where?

Where are all the promises of peace, co-existence, plurality that

were promised by God’s men?

I want to ask, how?

How did the word of God, which was meant to guide us and hold us

together in compassion, became the decree for murder?

I want to ask, who?

Who will put an end to this madness?

When will we realize that bigotry feeds intolerance?

But I know you wont answer me.

Ignore me. Oppress me.

Silence me with your bullets.

Because, I am a blasphemer *Anonymous*

About Sana Saleem

The author is Feature Editor (South Asia) at BEE magazine. BEE is a quarterly journal published in Britain, focusing on Asian Women. Blogger at The Guardian, Global Voices, Dawn.com & Asian Correspondent.

Education Emergency In Pakistan Part of Global Pandemic

[Education of the young is the only thing that will save humanity from itself.  This is Pakistan's biggest solvable problem, as it is also the entire world's most pressing need, perhaps as great as the need for food.  If you do not nourish the mind, then why bothering feeding the body?  A sick, immature, clueless mind in a normal healthy adult, often leads to multiple problems for people around them, or anyone within the uneducated individual's zone of existence.  The best comparison I can make would be between that of an owner of a new, out-of-the-box computer, trying to perform any task involving the Internet.  There must be a certain level of information within that person's mind to function, or to interact in any rational way with another human being, other than sharing "mindless" communication.

Evolution in some form is a fact.  Deny it until you are blue in the face, but it remains a hard historical fact.  Every species of living thing has gone through stages of development which can only be described as evolving.  Mother Nature shaping us to suit our living environment.  The next stage in our development as an adaptable species must be intellectual development, to shape our minds to the condition required of them.  We have to think ourselves through all of this.  That requires that we become logical, thinking beings, instead of instinctual, reactionary creatures, who don't think themselves through life, they feel their way through.  The dawning of the technological era changes all of this.  We cannot operate the most basic technology by "feeling" our way through.

It's time for all of us to begin using our heads.  If we do not properly educate our young, we are failing them as parents.

Feed your heads, people...Feed their heads.]

Education Emergency Pakistan

The Pakistan Education Task Force | DAWN.COM

Only 35 per cent of school children, aged 6-16, can read a story, while 50 per cent cannot read a sentence. – Photo by Fayyaz Ahmed

Today, Pakistan is crippled by an education emergency that threatens tens of millions of children.

No country can thrive in the modern world without educated citizens.

But the emergency has disastrous human, social and economic consequences, andthreatens the security of the country.

2011 is Pakistan’s Year of Education.

It’s time to think again about Pakistan’s most pressing long-term challenge.

The economic cost of not educating Pakistan is the equivalent of one flood every year. The only difference is that this is a self-inflicted disaster.

One in ten of the world’s out-of-school children is a Pakistani.  That is the equivalent of the entire population of Lahore.

There is a zero per cent chance that the government will reach the millennium development goals by 2015 on education. On the other hand, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are all on their way to achieving the same goals. India’s improvement rate is ten times that of Pakistan, Bangladesh’s is twice that of Pakistan.

But, despite this gloomy situation, determined efforts can show results in only two years. What is required is an additional spending of Rs.100 billion, a 50 per cent increase over current spending.

Pakistanis have a constitutional right to universal education, a little discussed or known fact of the law. What has been overlooked in the discourse on the 18th Amendment is that education has now become a right and no longer a privilege as it was previously. Article 25A sets up a possible scenario where a citizen can take the government to court for not providing them access, or even be the grounds for a suo moto action.

At current rates of progress, no person alive today will see a Pakistan with universal education as defined in our constitution. Balochistan would see it in 2100 or later.

Just one year of education for women in Pakistan can help reduce fertility by 10 per cent, controlling the other resource emergency this country faces.

There are 26 countries poorer than Pakistan but send more of their children to school, demonstrating the issue is not about finances, but will and articulating demand effectively. It is too easy, and incorrect, to believe that Pakistan is too poor to provide this basic right.

Pakistan spent 2.5 per cent of its budget on schooling in 2005/2006. It now spends just 1.5 per cent in the areas that need it most.  That is less than the subsidies given to PIA, PEPCO and Pakistan Steel. Provinces are allocated funds for education but fail to spend the money.

We presume the public school system is doing poorly because teachers are poorly paid, this is untrue. Public school teachers get paid 2/3rds more than their equivalent private low cost school counterparts; they earn four times that of the average parent of a child in their school. Despite this, on any given day 10-15 per cent of teachers will be absent from their duties teaching.

There is demand for education that is partly being addressed by low cost private schools, even one third of all rural children go to these schools (public schools can cost Rs.150 per month, low cost private schools the same or up to Rs.250). Despite the large presumption of the media, both domestic and international, this gap is not actually being addressed by Madrassahs. Only six per cent of students go to Madrassahs.

Only 35 per cent of school children, aged 6-16, can read a story, while 50 per cent cannot read a sentence. Their performance is only slightly better than that of out-of-school children, of whom 24 per cent can read a story. This alarmingly demonstrates the ineffectiveness of schooling.

30,000 school buildings are in dangerous condition, posting a threat to the well being of children. Whereas 21,000 schools have no building whatsoever.

Donors are not the solution, while they grab headlines regarding their development work, government spending remains the majority by an overwhelming margin.