BC Inc.: How British Columbia Ceded to the Frackers

The Ministry of Natural Gas

by Ray Grigg - Shades of Green

By electing a party whose principal economic platform is the development of British Columbia's natural gas resources, BC voters have decided to tempt disaster. The province's premier, apparently oblivious to the portentous warnings of climate science, has created a new ministry specifically tasked with the responsibility of developing at least three liquid natural gas (LNG) plants by 2020 — the industry envisions an eventual total of six — with the objective of shipping massive quantities of this product to an apparently energy-hungry Asian market.

The strategy is couched in exuberant promise. Billions of dollars in royalties are expected to quickly erase BC's debt, provide employment for thousands, end homelessness, fund education, solve healthcare problems and create a huge legacy fund. An estimated trillion dollars in additional economic activity over 30 years is supposed to bring unparalleled wealth to the province. In response to environmental concerns, LNG is being pitched as a “climate solution” because burning natural gas is advertised as producing only about half the carbon dioxide of oil. Everyone is supposed to relax, trust that the future will be secure under the guidance of political expedience, and disregard the frenzy of drilling, fracking and pumping.

However, such promise comes with concerns. Global carbon dioxide emissions continue to rocket upward, with no reductions in sight. World consumption of coal is soaring, increasing in almost every country but the United States. Japan, stung by the trauma of the meltdown of its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, is shifting its energy toward coal and gas — its carbon dioxide emissions are up 30 percent. Even Germany, with its idealistic pragmatism on carbon emissions, is building more coal-fired electrical generation stations as it, too, cuts back on nuclear power. Meanwhile, the promise of making coal clean with carbon capture and storage has been mostly ineffectual, both economically and practically. To complete the scenario, huge new supplies of oil are now rushing to market from the innovation of horizontal drilling in shale deposits. The International Energy Agency has measured the daily global consumption of oil at 89.8 million barrels per day for 2012, and expects a rise to 90.6 mbd for 2013. So LNG will be added to the climate-changing effects of unrestrained oil and coal consumption.

With no foreseeable shortages of fossil fuels for decades, and with the prospect of nearly limitless quantities of natural gas inundating the market by pipeline and LNG tankers, economists are predicting a decrease in the dollar value of oil and coal. This will encourage their use, reduce the pressure for efficiency, and undermine the renewable energy option from such sources such as wind, solar, geothermal and tidal — precisely what the global climate crisis does not need.

Assuming that the foundational principles of climate science are correct — as they almost certainly are — then the development of natural gas and LNG in BC is a regressive strategy, a shortsighted and reckless venture in the direction of catastrophe. When burning 1 kg of natural gas produces 2.75 kg of carbon dioxide, advertising LNG as “green” is a political strategy, not an environmental one.

Considerable evidence argues against the environmental benefits of LNG — cleaner than oil and coal is hardly a sterling recommendation for burning another fossil fuel. Extracting reliable quantities of natural gas from sparse concentrations in shale requires nearly constant drilling. Fracking necessitates the injection of toxic chemicals and inordinate amounts of valuable water into sometimes unpredictable strata. Leakage of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, commonly occurs in the process. Pumping adds to emissions. The cooling and compressing to convert natural gas to LNG is extremely energy intensive. Then ocean-going shipping contributes to the inefficiency. By totalling all these expenditures of energy, some critics calculate that LNG is almost as carbon intensive as coal.

Furthermore, the economic benefits for BC are likely overly optimistic. Many countries are presently planning or building LNG plants for export purposes — a dozen in the US and several in Australia. And Russia, with natural gas resources that dwarf the ones in this province, will be piping supplies directly to China. Meanwhile, Asian countries are being careful to diversify their LNG sources, a strategy designed to keep the energy market competitive and prices down.

But the sociological argument against LNG is, perhaps, the most damning and compelling. Societies that come to rely heavily on the export of raw resources invariably stultify their human potential and handicap their future prospects. Their economies become narrow, brittle and unstable, subject to the vagaries of boom-and-bust cycles. Skewed in favour of fast and easy money rather than solid and sustainable enterprise, they relinquish their economic control to the decisions of others. When the source of their wealth is fragile and uncertain, their aspirations invariably overreach their ability to pay and their collective psychology begins to exhibit the personality characteristics of the addict.

Such resource-based societies lose resilience, independence and confidence. So they are inclined to perceive themselves as vulnerable victims rather than confident initiators. As their collective psyche suffers an erosion of power, sophistication, pride and morale, they become cynical, an unhealthy psychology that combines with a frayed social fabric to make their problems progressively more difficult to solve. A sense of defeat and powerlessness even manifests as a declining involvement in participatory democracy.

British Columbians will pay a high price for LNG. But the cost to the global environment will be immeasurably higher. BC owes itself and the world much more than this.

Policy Critic Silber Visited by IRS

When the Man Comes Around: Saving a Voice of Integrity and Compassion

by Chris Floyd - Empire Burlesque

Arthur Silber is in trouble. The IRS has targeted his sole source of income -- PayPal donations to his website -- and have taken everything that was in it. Now his PayPal account is unusable. His situation is dire.

Regular readers here will know that Silber -- a peerless, powerful voice on the many madnesses that beset our world today -- is dealing with catastrophic health issues and crippling poverty. Yet still he manages to produce an astonishing body of work -- important essays of original, astringent insight and raucous, penetrating wit. Quite simply, there is no one else like him writing in the political blogosphere (or elsewhere). His is a vital voice that we cannot afford to lose.

But in this, our low, dishonest century, we see that at every turn, great criminals are lauded, honored, protected and rewarded, while those who speak the truth to power -- and about power -- are crushed beneath the boot heels of the imperial machinery. This can take high-profile form -- as in the cases of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, for example -- but it also happens every day to countless people across the land, and across the world, who never make the headlines, who simply try their best to live their lives with integrity and compassion, yet fall into the maw of the machine. Such virtues have no place in the rapacious world constructed by, and for the benefit of, our gilded elites.

Silber's work blazes with integrity and compassion. He's not a hack chewing partisan cud or a guru belching dogma, but a thinker thinking thoughts that can grow, evolve, deepen and change. You will never come away from his essays without having your mind engaged, invigorated, spurred to further, fruitful reflection, even turned in new directions. What more can you ask of a writer? And how many writers do we have like that?

So I would urge you to get over to his site and read the recent posts (here and here) that outline his present situation. He needs, first of all, some legal help in treading the IRS labyrinth, and also your continued support to sustain his work, which benefits us all. (He gives an address where people can contact him regarding ways of donating despite the current blockages.) Again, do go there, and do whatever you can.

Bringing Beirut Back to Rubble

The Bomb in My Neighborhood: Syrian War Hits Beirut

by Franklin Lamb

Dahiyeh, Beirut - This observer’s neighbors seemed to believe, especially over the past year, as most of us did, that the war in Syria would, in one form or another, spill into our neighborhood, Dahiyeh, the Hezbollah stronghold in south Beirut near the Shatila and Burj el Barajeh Palestinian refugee camps.

And now it has with a vengeance.

As this observer left his flat this morning and walked toward his motorbike on Abbas Mousawi Street en route to Shatila Palestinian Camp for a 10:30 a.m. appointment, at precisely 10:15 a.m. there was a tremendously loud blast. It seemed to shake our massive 12 story apartment building which had been rebuilt by the WAAD (“promise”) Hezbollah construction enterprise, from the mountain of rubble it was turned into in July of 2006. Leveled as most in the neighborhood were, by American weapons in the service of the Zionist regime still occupying Palestine.

Contrary to media reports, the blast was not on my street, Abass Mousawi, behind Bahman Hospital, but rather down a side street one block over and two east toward the Hezbollah media office near the Hezbollah sponsored Islamic Cooperation Center in the area of Bir al-Abed. The explosion occurred close to the Coop supermarket and Salah Ghandour Square.

Jumping on my motorbike I was one of the first to arrive on the scene face to face with an inferno that initially seemed to engulf ten or so cars in a parking lot surrounded by eight or nine Waad built high-rise apartment buildings, being a few of the more than 250 residential buildings in our neighborhood leveled during the 33 day July 2006 war.

Finally, it seemed like an eternity, two fire trucks arrived and made their way through the rapidly expanding chaos as nearby residential buildings with windows blown out started to empty of their inhabitants amidst fears that another blast may be triggered. A few men joined this observer in pulling the very long hoses close to the inferno as medics arrived and searched for injured. At press time, 38 neighbors were treated, including several children, at nearby Bahman Hospital and others rushed to Rasoul al-Alham hospital and Cardiac Care Center, ten minutes away on airport road.

I observed a six feet by six feet by around eight foot deep crater at the blast site. As I watched the Red Crescent and Hezbollah emergency services staff care for the injured and the many who were traumatized, the crowd quickly grew to a few thousand, with fear, shock and anger spreading. Many elderly slumped against walls and curbs dazed while neighbor helped neighbor, especially the young to cope with the effects of the blast which shattered windows and caused serious damage to several nearby residential buildings, including cracks in their walls. There was much panic and shouting, with crying turning to anger and with people caring for the elderly and children with apartment building entrances set up as emergency treatment areas and neighbors helping neighboring reassure one another.

The Hezbollah neighborhood of Dahiyeh has been for years considered the safest residential area of Beirut due to strong Hezbollah security measures which over the past year have been intensified including the use of packs of explosive sniffing dogs moving up and across the streets and alleys, usually around three in the morning I have noticed since I often work during the night when its cooler and more quiet, and hearing a barking dog is very rare around here. More scrutiny-security cameras have been placed on utility poles and on rooftops, with security personnel frequently stopping and questioning new arrivals or visitors to the area and at time residents told not to go to their roofs.

Yet, as Syria’s President Bashar Assad noted several months ago, despite intensive security measures taken in Damascus, it is still very difficult to prevent car bombings.

The speculation has already started concerning who committed this act of terrorism, one day before the start of the Holy Month of Ramadan. Whoever is was, causee the carnage by booby trapping a 1998 Renault Rapid. No one has yet claimed responsibility and likely will not. Hezbollah’s International Relations official Hizbullah MP Ali Ammar told al-Manar that the blast was carried out by the supporters of the so-called American-Israeli project. “There are clear Israeli fingerprints,” Ammar said as he inspected the damage.

The Bir al-Abed bombing , not far from the spot where William Casey ordered the 1985 CIA bombing that targeted Shia cleric, Sayed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, in which 80 citizens were murdered and more than 200 wounded, is interpreted but some of the residents in my building, (two families so far telling me they will move), as simply a message for Hezbollah to leave Syria. Some local residents told this observer that if it was a typical al Qaeda operation aiming at maximum civilian deaths, detonating the blast a few hundred yards in any direction would have left many more victims, according to a Hezbollah bomb specialist.

This observer counted 15 destroyed vehicles and more than 20 damaged. A fierce fire erupted among some of the vehicles sending thick black smoke billowing high into the sky. I also saw gentlemen who I assumed was the parking lot attendant badly wounded. Another wounded man near him seemed also to be in serious condition.

Reuters has reported five were killed but Hezbollah is denying this report and I met the Hezbollah Media director on the scene and his job was to get the facts straight before the Party of God made any announcements.

For many in my neighborhood, a major concern is that Syria’s troubles will reopen the wounds of Lebanon’s long civil war but this time with the Sunni community, which by and large supports the Syrian opposition, being pitted against Hezbollah, the powerful Shiite led Resistance organization which supports Syria President Bashar al-Assad.

A reliable Hezbollah source has just advised this observer that 53 have been wounded but so far no confirmed fatalities have been reported.

This is the second time this year that the Hezbollah stronghold has come under attack following threats of retaliation by Syrian rebels.

The concierge of my building just reported that as of 4 p.m. Beirut time on 7/9/2013, two suspects have been arrested as Hezbollah and authorities investigate the blast.


Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and Syria and is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com

The Devil, Daniel, and the Deep Dark Snowden

The Devil and Daniel Ellsberg

by Peter Lee - China Matters

In my most recent piece for Asia Times Online, I discussed calls for Edward Snowden to “do an Ellsberg” i.e. demonstrate his patriotic lovingkindness by surrendering to US authorities.

In his memoir Secrets, Ellsberg details the dirty tricks projects the Nixon administration initiated against him and speculates their purpose was to blackmail him into shutting up, or drive him into exile or even suicide.

Ellsberg writes, “I feel sure, knowing myself at that time, that nothing could have induced me to do any of those things.” (pg. 443)

Nevertheless, as the ATOl piece points out, Ellsberg feels that Snowden is in a different situation:

But meanwhile, the treatment of him, and the pronouncements by everybody here, like - I'm talking about Snowden now - have convinced Snowden, and I think very realistically, that if he wanted to be able to tell the public what he had done and why he had done it and what his motives were and what the patterns of criminality were in the material that he was releasing, it had to be outside the United States. Otherwise he would be in perhaps the same cell that Bradley Manning was, and that's a military cell.

Ellsberg returned to this issue on July 7 in an opinion piece for the Washington Post. He pointed out that he had, like Snowden, gone into hiding and accepted fugitive status in order to complete his distribution of the Pentagon Papers before surrendering.

Ellsberg also noted that while under indictment he was able to stay out of jail for two years to agitate for the end of the Vietnam War and, in the process, make the case for himself in the court of public opinion, on the strength of a less than backbreaking $50,000 bond—a luxury that Edward Snowden would be unlikely to enjoy:

I hope Snowden’s revelations will spark a movement to rescue our democracy, but he could not be part of that movement had he stayed here. There is zero chance that he would be allowed out on bail if he returned now and close to no chance that, had he not left the country, he would have been granted bail. Instead, he would be in a prison cell like Bradley Manning, incommunicado.

Secrets also describes Ellsberg’s spiritual journey from parfait knight of the US foreign policy round table to anguished and increasingly indignant whistleblower. His privileged access to the government, think tank, and media elites is worlds away from Edward Snowden and his anonymous grubbing in the data mines of the post-9/11 security state.

While working on the Nixon transition in late 1968, Henry Kissinger asked RAND to review the Vietnam situation. RAND nominates Daniel Ellsberg:

Kissinger approved, though with one reservation…Kissinger was happy to have me do the study, but he had one worry about me, my “discretion.”

I was astonished…My whole career was based on a well-founded trust in my discretion. (Secrets, pg. 230).

A few pages later, Ellsberg completes a document framing the crucial Vietnam issues for comment by the various US executive branch stakeholders; it is circulated as “NSSM-1” i.e. National Security Study Memorandum 1, the first document of its series put out by Nixon’s National Security Administration. The various stakeholders provide 500 pages of extremely revealing responses.

Fast forward to pg. 241-2:

[Mort Halperin, the DoD staffer responsible for assembling the Pentagon Papers] took me aside…one morning and said, “I’m going to ask you not to show any of this material to anybody at Rand or take any copies back with you.”…I took it for granted from Mort’s unemphatic, pro forma tone that what he meant was simply to go on record as telling me not to do this, thereby signaling that it should not get back to the White House that Rand had his material…if Mort had really been serious about keeping me from sending this back to Rand, he could have conveyed that very reliably…


So having registered Mort’s warning and agreeing with him, I took care to copy all the documents myself in the copying alcove of the NSCD, rather than hand them to a secretary to copy, as I would otherwise have done. When I took them back to Rand, I convened a rather large meeting…Having made and passed out a number of copies, I repeated the warning that Halperin had given to me…I said that this was presumably so he could disclaim responsibility…

“Discrete” indeed. Not to worry:

…Some months later…I asked [Halperin] if I had been right…Halperin said, “Of course.”

In Daniel Ellsberg’s estimation his leak of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 did little, if anything to end the Vietnam War as conducted by Richard Nixon. The U.S. war only ended because of Nixon’s downfall soon after his re-election in 1972, thanks to the antics of his plumbers, the team of extra-legal leak-plugging zealots that Nixon’s coterie unleashed on his enemies.

The wonderful, ironic element is the role of Henry Kissinger—and Daniel Ellsberg--in Nixon’s fall.

According to Ellsberg, Kissinger had a low opinion of Nixon; on the occasion of RMN’s election, he told an audience at MIT that Nixon was “not fit to be president”. That was not the Kissinger line once Nixon appointed him as his National Security Advisor, but one can speculate that Kissinger’s doubts precluded a comfortable atmosphere of trust and understanding between Nixon and his national security Richelieu.

Nixon was not too disturbed by the leak of the Pentagon Papers at first.

The Papers concluded their narrative with the Johnson administration and painted a pleasing picture of Democratic duplicity and cluelessness under Kennedy and LBJ.

Nixon, eager to undercut the stature of Edward Kennedy, his expected Democratic challenger in the next election, instructed his minions to push out the Pentagon Papers story of the US role in the deposition and liquidation of South Vietnam’s President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963.

Diem, in addition to being an incapable president, was also an ardent Catholic who lived a virtually cloistered existence. Nixon felt that highlighting Kennedy betrayal of a fellow Catholic would weaken Edward Kennedy’s appeal to his core religious base.

Doubt and anxiety pervaded Nixon’s mind, however, when a key document from his own administration, NSSM-1 , the memorandum referenced above, made its way into the hands of a Senatorial critic, Mark Mathias, and Mathias revealed some of its pessimistic conclusions.

The prospect of a leak in his own national security apparatus appalled Nixon, because he had hid the details of the secret bombing of Cambodia even from his own secretaries of state (William Smith) and defense (Melvin Laird).

The irony is that NSSM-1 leaked, not because the current denizens of the Nixon White House couldn’t keep a secret, but because Daniel Ellsberg had copied the document while he was working for Henry Kissinger.

Kissinger, the dissembling courtier (or, if you prefer, the terrified capo secretly writhing before Nixon’s Don Corleone) dared not short circuit the leak investigation by admitting that he had nourished the Ellsberg viper in the bosom of the new administration:

…there was no awareness throughout that period that what I had given Mathias was (simply) NSSM-1. Moreover, it’s clear from numerous taped discussions that Kissinger never did reveal to Nixon the embarrassing information that I had worked directly for him in February and March of 1969…Since no one knew both those pieces of data, [Attorney General John] Mitchell’s conclusion…that there must be a conspiracy was inescapable…[Secrets, pg. 435]

And so the operation to find the anti-war movement’s non-existent co-conspirators inside Nixon’s NSC—the march of folly of the plumbers who blundered through the Watergate operation and eventually brought down the Ellsberg case and the Nixon presidency—was born.

Media Truth First Victim of Snowden Affair

What the Snowden Affair Reveals About US Journalism

by Dave Lindorff - CounterPunch

It’s little wonder that despite his disclosure of an unprecedented KBG-like or Stasi-like spying program targeting all Americans, fully half of all Americans polled are saying that National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden is a “spy” or “traitor” who should be brought to justice.

Why would this be, when a solid majority also say they oppose the spying program?

A major reason would be that the politicians and other Washington leaders like Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey are lying, claiming that Snowden has damaged US national security. Another would be that the corporate media are pushing the line that Snowden is not a civil-liberties motivated whistle-blowing patriot, but rather a traitor or a spy.

Take the Philadelphia Inquirer. A couple of days ago, this once-respected paper in one of America’s major cities ran a piece about Snowden, calling him a “spy” in the headline, though there was no mention of the word spy in the article itself. Without any sense of irony, the paper ran another article that day on the same page about the anger in Europe over the NSA’s spying on Europeans and their governments — supposedly America’s allies — and while that article was about spying by the US government, the headline eschewed using the word “spy.”

I called the paper’s city desk to complain and was told by a seemingly sympathetic editor on the desk that the head of the copy desk would call me, but of course, he never did. Nor did the paper deign to publish a letter I sent in criticizing the decision to use the word “spy” to describe Snowden.

Then today, the Inquirer did it again. This time it was an AP article on page two of the paper reporting on comments made by Gen. Dempsey on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. Again, the Inquirer’sheadline was “Dempsey: Spy has harmed relations.” But the piece, which refers to Snowden as a “leaker,” never does call Snowden a “spy.” Nor does Gen. Dempsey, at least as quoted in the article. The “spy” terminology is purely the work of the paper’s editors.

That’s not to say Gen. Dempsey isn’t also messing with the truth in this case. He stated on the CNN program that Snowden’s disclosure about global surveillance programs targeting allies in Europe and elsewhere had “undermined US relationships with other countries” and affected what he called “the importance of trust.” As Dempsey put it, “the US will have to work its way back. but it (the disclosure by Snowden) will set us back temporarily.”

Think about that a minute — something the writer of the article clearly didn’t bother to do, and which, sadly, most CNN viewers and newspaper readers probably won’t do either: Was it Snowden’s revelations of the NSA’s spying on friendly countries and millions of their citizens that undermined trust in the US, or was it the spying itself?

The article goes on to quote a couple of congressional blowhards calling for tough sanctions against countries in Latin America that might offer asylum to Snowden (currently Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua have offered to help him with sanctuary). House Intelligence (sic) Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-MI), told the same CNN program that if Snowden is issued travel documents to allow him to fly to one of those countries (the US has revoked his passport, making it hard for him to get a flight out of Moscow), the US should “look at” trade agreements with the nations offering asylum “to send a very clear message that we won’t put up with this kind of behavior.” He was joined by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who said, “Clearly, such acceptance of Snowden to any country is going to put them directly against the United States, and they need to know that.”

Again, no context is offered. We’re not told that Venezuela only a few years ago experienced a failed coup against its late democratically elected leader Hugo Chavez (who was captured and taken hostage), which the Bush administration almost immediately endorsed and recognized (it failed when the army and people massively stood by Chavez). Nor are we told that the Obama administration refused to accept the last internationally monitored and certified election of Chavez successor Nicolas Maduro. No wonder Venezuela would want to offer asylum to Snowden, whom Maduro has said, correctly, of Snowden, “He is a young man who has told the truth, in the spirit of rebellion, about the United States spying on the whole world.”

As for Nicaragua, its president, Daniel Ortega Saavedra, was a leader of the Sandinista popular front which ousted hereditary dictator Anastasia Somosa Debayle, only to have to endure years of military assault by the US and the brutal “Contra” forces it illegally armed and organized from neighboring Honduras. Returned to the presidency by popular election, Ortega understandably is sympathetic to an American citizen on the run from the great imperialist aggressor to the north that so tormented his nation.

Finally, there’s Bolivia, whose popular elected president Evo Morales had his plane barred from flying home from a summit meeting in Russia by conniving US officials who convinced French, Portuguese and Spanish governments to deny him access to their air space, and who was then forced to suffer the indignity of an illegal search of his plane in Austria, where he was forced to land when fuel ran low on the plane.

This blatant violation of the long-recognized and legally accepted standard of absolute diplomatic immunity of national leaders, under US pressure, prompted a group of angry Latin American leaders to rush to La Paz to stand in solidarity with Morales when he finally made it home. Morales was quick to offer Snowden asylum “in retaliation” for the US aggression against his country–a stance that, if Americans were informed about it honestly, most would agree was totally understandable.

One searches in vain in the US media to find an explanation that under the Vienna Convention, and under the terms of a US law signed by President Gerald Ford in 1976, heads of state have absolute immunity when they travel outside their country. One searches in vain too for an explanation that even if Morales had been transporting Snowden on his presidential jet back to Bolivia (he was not on the plane), he would have been entirely within his rights as a head of state to do so.

The failure of the US corporate media, and specifically of articles like those cited in the Philadelphia Inquirer or CNN’s “State of the Union,” to make all this clear, and to simply parrot the self-serving and misleading statements of US officials, is nothing short of journalistic malpractice.

It shows the national corporate media to be little more than unofficial propaganda arms of the US government.

DAVE LINDORFF is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

Gasland 2

Gasland 2

by Josh Fox

EnCana Cat Minding Pigeon's Fracked Water Studies

EnCana Takes Over Funding of Govt Study Into Fracking Water Contamination

by Damien Gillis - The Canadian.org

What promised to be a ground-breaking report into the effects of natural gas hydraulic fracturing on groundwater has devolved into a classic case of the fox in charge of the hen house.

The US Environmental Protection Agency's hotly anticipated study into links between fracking and water contamination in Wyoming has been co-opted by the very company whose activities it was investigating - Canadian natural gas titan, EnCana.

ProPublica is reporting that the Wyoming study - a draft of which was published in 2011, stirring up significant controversy and opposition from industry - has been abandoned by the EPA to Wyoming state authorities and will now be funded by EnCana.

EnCana is also at the centre of a high-profile lawsuit regarding water contamination being brought in Alberta court by Jessica Ernst, an environmental consultant with 30 years experience working in oil and gas. Ernst herself released a landmark compendium of evidence regarding water contamination from fracking last month.

The draft 2011 Wyoming report found carcinogenic fracking fluids in a pair of deep groundwater monitoring wells drilled into an aquifer in Pavillion, Wyoming. Local residents had been complaining that drilling "fouled their water has turned up alarming levels of underground pollution," according to ProPublica - which has been doing leading-edge investigative work into the impacts of fracking on water from several years now.

Now, ProPublica reveals that the EPA is backing away from the research - which was the first of its kind to establish a scientific link between fracking and groundwater contamination - under significant pressure from the industry.

Industry advocates say the EPA’s turnabout reflects an overdue recognition that it had over-reached on fracking and that its science was critically flawed.

But environmentalists see an agency that is systematically disengaging from any research that could be perceived as questioning the safety of fracking or oil drilling, even as President Obama lays out a plan to combat climate change that rests heavily on the use of natural gas.

Over the past 15 months, they point out, the EPA has:

• Closed an investigation into groundwater pollution in Dimock, Pa., saying the level of contamination was below federal safety triggers.
• Abandoned its claim that a driller in Parker County, Texas, was responsible for methane gas bubbling up in residents’ faucets, even though a geologist hired by the agency confirmed this finding.
• Sharply revised downward a 2010 estimate showing that leaking gas from wells and pipelines was contributing to climate change, crediting better pollution controls by the drilling industry even as other reports indicate the leaks may be larger than previously thought.
• Failed to enforce a statutory ban on using diesel fuel in fracking.

“We’re seeing a pattern that is of great concern,” said Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington. “They need to make sure that scientific investigations are thorough enough to ensure that the public is getting a full scientific explanation.”

The agency is publicly maintaining the above developments and issues are unrelated, yet, according to ProPublica, "In private conversations...high-ranking agency officials acknowledge that fierce pressure from the drilling industry and its powerful allies on Capitol Hill – as well as financial constraints and a delicate policy balance sought by the White House -- is squelching their ability to scrutinize not only the effects of oil and gas drilling, but other environmental protections as well."



Damien Gillis is a Vancouver-based documentary filmmaker with a focus on environmental and social justice issues - especially relating to water, energy, and saving Canada's wild salmon.

Israel's Toilet: Settlers Dump Raw Sewage on Palestinian Farms

Israeli Settlers dump sewage on Palestinian farmland near Bethlehem

 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC News

On Sunday afternoon, the Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit, west of Bethlehem, pumped thousands of gallons of sewage wastewater onto Palestinian farmland, destroying the crops and rendering the land unusable.

Farmer in Wadi Fukin looks toward settlement of Beitar Illit (image by Mother Jones)
The area impacted is over one hundred acres of farmland in Wadi Fukin village.

The village council issued a statement calling on the Palestinian and Israeli authorities to act to do something about the constant harassment by the Israeli settlers in Beitar Illit settlement, and the periodic dumping of sewage onto village land.

The sewage wastewater dumping on Sunday affected the lands of around fifty local farmers, whose livelihoods depend on the farmland in question.

Israeli authorities have not responded to the request that they take action to stop the illegal dumping, and hold those responsible to account.

In the past, illegal dumping and seizure of the land of Wadi Fukin has been met by silence from the Israeli authorities.

Unanswered Questions in RCMP Canada Day Bust

Thick as a Brick: Disturbing Questions in RCMP Canada Day Bust

by Matthew Behrens -  Rabble.ca

The July 1 arrests of B.C. residents Amanda Korody and John Nuttall -- charged with planning to blow up a pressure cooker cluster bomb at the B.C. legislature -- raise many disturbing questions about the nature of the Canadian government's "counter-terrorism" operations. Equally troubling has been media coverage playing up hot-button themes that trigger fears of marginalized people, whether they be drug addiction and reliance on social assistance, to heavy metal music and the popular catch-all description for anyone who doesn't quite fit into a sick society: mental illness.

As anyone can gather from news reports, the two suspects have not trod the easiest of paths, and the pair's friends doubt they would be capable of planning, much less executing, the alleged acts. Their right to privacy has also been invaded, with media thumbing through their personal effects in an apartment that, remarkably, was not taped off as a potential crime scene by the police.

Interestingly, following a month of revelations about massive spying on the global citizenry, the attempt by the Mounties to scare up a little self-serving attention by trumpeting themselves as The Heroes Who Saved Canada Day appears to have fallen flat, as many are questioning what role undercover operatives may have played in facilitating the apparent attack. RCMP Assistant Commissioner Wayne Rideout noted at the press conference announcing the arrests, "We employed a variety of complex investigative and covert techniques to control any opportunity the suspects had to commit harm. These devices were completely under our control, they were inert, and at no time represented a threat to public safety."

In other words, they appear to have had someone on the inside with a great deal of influence over events, either a Mountie or someone from CSIS, the spy agency that allegedly spoke to the Mounties about the case in February. As the Vancouver Province noted in an editorial, "On April 2, police had enough evidence leading to charges of facilitating a terrorist activity and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence, but the couple was not arrested. On June 25, there was enough evidence for Nuttall to be charged with making or possessing an explosive substance, but again there were no arrests." Did the RCMP stage-manage things so that the connection to Canada Day would provide them with a blast of patriotic coverage?

Sting operations

The questions point to practices south of the border, where the great majority of so-called terrorism arrests are in fact set up by and facilitated by the agents who then bust them: the FBI. A 2011 investigation by Mother Jones magazine examined the FBI strategy of "pre-emption" and "disruption" -- the latter a term used by the RCMP in the present case -- and found that the agency targets "tens of thousands of law-abiding people, seeking to identify those disgruntled few who might participate in a plot given the means and the opportunity. And then, in case after case, the government provides the plot, the means, and the opportunity."

Mother Jones quotes lawyer Martin Stolar, who defended one man caught in a 2004 FBI sting, as noting that with many of the terrorism cases, "defendants would not have done anything if not kicked in the ass by government agents. They're creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror."

The magazine points out that with three exceptions, "all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings," all of which tend to target socially marginalized individuals.

Were the B.C. arrests part of an RCMP/CSIS sting operation? Some recall that the so-called Toronto 18 case may never have gotten off the ground without the able assistance of undercover, paid government informants who facilitated key elements of the case. In the case of Mr. Nuttall, his paintballing friend was quoted as saying, "Personally, I think he was hanging out with the wrong people and they screwed with his head a little bit." Was one of the apparent "wrong people" a government agent encouraging Mr. Nuttall? And is the RCMP above staging terrorism arrests?

History of illegal acts

If history is any indication, the answer would be no. Much of the Mounties' lengthy history of corruption, illicit activity and outright lawbreaking was summed up nicely in a 1970 memo from then RCMP Commissioner W.L. Higgitt. Labelled "RCMP Protection for Members Engaged in Sensitive or Secret Operations," the Commissioner wrote: "Though it has not been the subject of general conversation, and should not be, it may have been considered necessary in the past, and may continue to be necessary in the future, to transgress the common, civil, or criminal law of the Country in order to work effectively or to achieve the desired results in a given case. More recently it has come to my attention that some members involved in delicate operations are concerned with the protection they and their families will receive in the event that an operation goes sour and they become subject to civil or criminal processes as a result."

Later in the memo, the Commissioner advises that:

 "where the member acts within the scope of the direction or the expressly approved plan, he will be protected to the greatest extent possible from criminal, quasi-criminal or civil responsibility. In the event complete protection cannot be afforded, a solicitor will be appointed to protect the member's interests. The Force will accept responsibility to pay any fine or reward levied against our member. In the event of incarceration for a period of time, the member will be paid as usual and on release will be employed again by the Force… Information contained herein should be disseminated on a 'need to know' basis to the members of your command."

This attitude of impunity for crimes committed riddles the RCMP like a cancer. It is why the RCMP authorized the questioning of Canadian Abdullah Almalki, then detained in Syria, knowing those questions would lead to his torture, without a thought for his human rights, much less the complicity in torture provisions of the Criminal Code of Canada or Canada's legally binding obligations under the Convention Against Torture.

Things are no better at CSIS where, as investigative reporter Andrew Mitrovica pointed out in his expose Covert Entry, Canada's spies have "routinely broken the law, treating the rights and liberties of Canadians as no more than a nuisance...[it is] riddled by waste, extravagance, laziness, nepotism, incompetence, corruption and law-breaking." There is a culture of impunity at CSIS, whose agents often refer to a Ways and Means Act: "if you have a way to get things done, the means -- legal or not -- are justified."

Throwing in Islam

Meanwhile, less attention has been paid to pathetic attempts to throw Islamic references into the mix, with desperate efforts to find a landlady or neighbour who can testify to hearing loud "Islamic" recordings coming from the basement and the RCMP's bizarre contention that although there is no international connection, the two appear to be "Al-Qaeda-inspired" and "self-radicalized," two canards that have little connection to reality. (While the Globe and Mail was invading the couple's privacy, they reported on finding amongst their books a copy of the Bible, George Orwell's Animal Farm, and albums by Jethro Tull and Nine Inch Nails.)

"She was into the rave scene, and then she became goth, then she was a big activist, then she was someone who worked out hardcore," a friend of suspect Amanda Korody was quoted as saying. "Before he was a proud Canadian," said a friend of John Nuttall. "Later he said, 'All I care about is Allah' and that Canadians and Americans shouldn't even be in Iraq or Afghanistan at all."

Taken together, these quotes represent a broad swath of Canadian opinion and experience, with the underlying brush that now tars as tainted anyone associated with such activities or beliefs. Yet, unlike some leaders in Canada's diverse Muslim community, no one from Canada's goth or workout scenes has been called upon to condemn the alleged acts or to engage in RCMP "community consultations." Nor is it likely that LA Fitness chains will now be infiltrated by undercover agents to root out the discontented health nuts pedaling their sweaty way atop an elliptical while reading rabble.ca columns on their iPads.

Continual references to the two as apparent "converts" to Islam begs the question: what religion were they following during previous years of mixed up lives, and why has that not been part of media reporting? It also plays into the insidious idea that, regardless of how many times Muslim community leaders plead that they are loyal and peaceful Canadians, the "influence" of their religion is what is ultimately dangerous, a powerful subtext that is repeated with each new scare headline about the growth of Islam in Canada (now estimated at a whopping 3.2 per cent of the total population). In other words, it is bad enough when people born Muslims are alleged to be involved in nefarious activities; it appears to be even worse when "one of ours," i.e., white Canadians, are sucked into the faith. Such pernicious thinking underlined much of the Red Scare: it was not so much the danger of Communists themselves as it was their ability to infect our precious bodily fluids with their subversive thoughts, and before one knew it, former Boy Scouts were marching against the bomb and for civil rights.

Mounties want you to like them

Like the scandal-plagued CSIS, the RCMP is desperate for good press these days, and the language in their early July press conference verged on a plea to like them on Facebook. "These arrests are another example of the effectiveness of our Integrated National Security Enforcement Team who worked tenaciously to prevent this plan from being carried out," said RCMP Assistant Commissioner James Malizia, perhaps a shout-out to CSIS, still reeling from revelations in late May that they failed to inform the RCMP about the Canadian navy's Jeffrey Delisle selling secrets to the Russians.

But the RCMP love-in that followed the arrests of two people in the alleged VIA Rail plot in April does not appear to have been replicated here. (In April, NDP leader Tom Muclair discarded the niceties of presumption of innocence when he led a standing ovation in the House of Commons for the Mounties after he said, without offering any proof of the allegations, that "I'd like to begin by thanking law enforcement officials, as well as a brave religious leader from the Toronto Muslim community who, as we learned yesterday, helped to prevent a potentially devastating attack on Canadian soil.")

In a final irony, the week before the Mounties rode to the rescue to save Canadians from folks who allegedly planned to "produce explosive devices designed to cause injury and death," those very same weapons, cluster bombs, were the subject of an ongoing attempt by Ottawa to water down the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Senate hearings. Rather than ratifying the convention as is, Ottawa has introduced a range of measures that, as the Mennonite Central Committee points out, "Creates loopholes and exceptions on the use of cluster munitions that undermine the Treaty as a comprehensive ban on an inhumane weapon; omits many of the positive obligations of the Treaty, including the destruction of stockpiles; the promotion of Treaty norms; the prohibition of investment in cluster bomb production; and the provision of support for victims."

Ultimately, a government that seeks to enable state use of cluster munitions appears possibly involved in an effort to encourage two hapless souls to build such a bomb, then arrest the couple as a notch in the war on terror, and convince Canadians that the authorities have decent human values at their core. Such logic would appear, in the words of a song in Mr. Nuttall's Jethro Tull collection, to be thick as a brick.

Matthew Behrens is a freelance writer and social justice advocate who co-ordinates the Homes not Bombs non-violent direct action network. He has worked closely with the targets of Canadian and U.S. 'national security' profiling for many years.

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Snowden Reveals the Obvious Too: Orbits of Influence

The Servility of the Satellites 

by Diana Johnstone - CounterPunch

Paris, France - The Snowden affair has revealed even more about Europe than about the United States.

Certainly, the facts of NSA spying are significant. But many people suspected that something of the sort was going on. The refusal of France, Italy and Portugal to allow the private aircraft of the President of Bolivia to cross their airspace on the mere suspicion that Edward Snowden might be aboard is rather more astonishing.

Together, these revelations confirm the completion of the transformation of the “Western democracies” into something else, an entity that as yet has no recognized name.

The outrage against the Bolivian President confirmed that this trans-Atlantic entity has absolutely no respect for international law, even though its leaders will make use of it when it suits them. But respect it, allow it to impede their actions in any way? Certainly not.

And this disrespect for the law is linked to a more basic institutional change: the destruction of effective democracy at the national level. This has been done by the power of money in the United States, where candidates are comparable to race horses owned by billionaires. In Europe, it has been done by the European Union, whose bureaucracy has gradually taken over the critical economic functions of independent states, leaving national governments to concoct huge controversies around private matters, such as marriage, while public policy is dictated from the EU Commission in Brussels.

But behind that Commission, and behind the US electoral game, lies the identical anonymous power that dictates its desires to this trans-Atlantic entity: financial capital.

This power is scheduled to be formally extended in the near future by the establishment of a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States. This development is the culmination of the so-called “European construction” that over several decades has transferred powers of sovereign European states to the EU, which in turn will transfer its power to trans-Atlantic institutions, all under the decisive control of “the Markets” – euphemism for financial capital.

The citizenry is informed of the latest stage of this ongoing de-democratization process only when it is well under way. The result is an ever-wider gap between “the political class”, which includes both politicians and the mass media, on one hand, and the general population on the other. The principal remaining task of the political class is to entertain the general population with the illusion that they are still living in a democracy, and that the officials they elect are acting in their interests.

When something like the grotesque incident of the Bolivian presidential plane occurs to expose the servility of the country’s officials, the mainstream media can be counted on to spin it out of sight. French television largely ignored the event – a negligence made easier by the latest Egyptian upheaval. One big international story per day is all the media consider suitable for a public whose basic news diet is centered on weather, sports and sex crimes.

To measure the surrender of French independence in recent decades, one can recall that in the 1970s, the government of center right President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing readily granted asylum to Black Panthers fleeing the United States. Today, the minister of the interior in a supposedly “center left” government rules out granting asylum to any citizen of the United States, on grounds that the U.S. is a “friend”, a “democracy” with an independent judicial system.

In Germany, anti-communist propaganda having used constant denunciations of Stasi prying to bury any recollection of the lost benefits of the East German regime, such as full employment, child care and
social equality for women, the revelations of NSA prying could not be overlooked. Even leading politicians in Germany seemed genuinely indignant.

In France, political leaders made faint sounds of disapproval and rapidly changed the subject. Insofar as the incident was mentioned at all, the line was that there was no point in making a big fuss about practices that we sophisticated Great Powers know all about anyway and practice ourselves. The smug “we do it too” self-incrimination is a way to claim that France is still a big bad power, and not a mere satellite of the United States.

During a TV interview yesterday, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius was shown a video of President Obama repeatedly referring to French president François Hollande as “President Houlon”. Fabius rapidly changed the subject to praise France’s important role in fostering war in Syria. The fact that the French president is considered so insignificant that Obama need not bother to learn his name was not worth noticing.

Obama’s disregard for Hollande, Hollande’s disregard for the President of Bolivia, are all part of this new world order ruled not by human concerns at all, but by “the markets”. It is not that the markets give direct orders in such matters. But the reduction of government to “governance” whose primary function is to keep the people quiet while institutions, laws and armed forces pursue the task of making the world safe for investment capital to reap its maximum profits, people are disempowered and politics becomes an empty exercise in conformity.

The explanation for this surrender lies in the ideology that has dominated Europe, and France perhaps most of all, for the past half century. A particular interpretation of the history of the mid-twentieth century has undermined confidence in popular sovereignty, (wrongly) accused of leading to “totalitarianism”. This ideology has prepared elites to abdicate in favor of technical institutions and “markets” that seem innocent of all political sins. The power of financial capital and its US champion is less the cause than the result of this political abdication.

Only this can explain the extraordinary rush of European governments to obey the slightest whim of the American master, on the eve of the negotiations for a trans-Atlantic free trade zone which European leaders will portray to their populations as compensation for the ongoing destruction of the European social welfare model. Principles, diplomatic decency, Edward Snowden, must all be sacrificed to this desperate last attempt to put Europe out of reach of the influence of its people.

A couple of commentators have gone so far as to suggest that Edward Snowden must be some sort of plant, supposedly to show people that the US government is all powerful. The affront to the Bolivian President illustrates this even more strikingly. But in the long run, awareness of the scope of this power is the first step toward liberation.

DIANA JOHNSTONE is the author of Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions. She can be reached at diana.josto@yahoo.fr

Base Instinct: Mushrooming Money and Military Industrial Complexes

The Classic Military Runaround: Your Tax Dollars at Work Keeping You in the Dark

by Nick Turse - TomDispatch

There are hundreds, possibly thousands of U.S. personnel -- the military refuses to say how many -- stationed in the ochre-tinted country of Qatar. Out in the searing heat of the desert, they fly fighter jets or fix them. They equip and arm troops headed to war.

Some work in a high-tech command-and-control center overseeing U.S. air operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere in the Greater Middle East.

Yet I found myself sitting in a hotel room in Doha, Qatar’s capital, about 30 miles east of al-Udeid Air Base, the main U.S. installation in the country, unable to see, let alone talk, to any of them.

In mid-May, weeks before my arrival in Qatar, I sent a request to the public affairs office at the base to arrange a visit with the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing, the unit that, according to the military, carries out a “criti­cal combat mission that spans nearly 6,000 miles from the Horn of Africa to Northern Afghanistan.” Or at least I tried to. Day or night, weekday or weekend, the website refused to deliver my message. Finally, I dug up an alternate email address and sent in my request. Days passed with no word, without even an acknowledgement. I followed up yet again and finally received a reply -- and then it began.

Tomgram: Nick Turse, The Snags, Snares, and Snafus of Covering the U.S. Military
 

The 30-year-old history of U.S. foreign policy: now, there’s a dynamite issue! Explosive, in fact. Far too dangerous, it turns out, for Americans to be informed about or have access to basic documents about -- so you might conclude from a recent report at Steven Aftergood’s website Secrecy News.

According to him, “A 1991 statute mandated that the State Department publish the documentary record of U.S. foreign policy (known as Foreign Relations of the United States, or FRUS) no later than 30 years after the events described.” They were years behind when President Obama, still in his sunshine mode, hit the Oval Office and ordered State “to complete the processing of the backlog of 25-year-old records awaiting declassification by the end of December 2013.”

Didn’t happen, of course. And that, it turns out, is the least of it. A State Department historical advisory committee (HAC), a “panel of distinguished historians,” has just weighed in with its own fears that “a substantial percentage of those records that have been reviewed by the NDC [National Declassification Center] have not been cleared for release to the public. In the opinion of the HAC, the relatively high number of reviewed documents that remain withheld from researchers and citizens raises fundamental questions about the declassification guidelines.” The historians wonder, in fact, whether the majority of the FRUS volumes will ever see the light of day.

History, too, may need its Edward Snowden, a rogue historian with access to those State documents and the urge to travel to Hong Kong or tour the bowels of Moscow’s international airport terminal. If no such historian appears, then Americans curious about the documentary history of our past may get another 30 years of the good old runaround -- and even then it’ll be nothing compared to what TomDispatch Managing Editor Nick Turse, author of the bestseller Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, received from the U.S. military. Tom

The Classic Military Runaround: 

Your Tax Dollars at Work Keeping You in the Dark

by Nick Turse

The initial response came on May 28th from the Media Operations Chief at Air Forces Central Command Public Affairs. She told me that I needed to contact the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing’s Public Affairs liaison, Captain Angela Webb, directly. So I repeatedly wrote to Captain Webb. No response. On June 10th, I received an email from Susan Harrington. She was, she told me, “taking over” for Captain Webb. Unfortunately, she added, it was now far too close to my arrival in Qatar to arrange a visit. “Due to time constraints,” she wrote me, “I do not think it will be possible to support this request since we are likely already within that 30 day window.”

Don’t think I was surprised. By now, I’m used to it. Whether I’m trying to figure out what the U.S. military is doing in Latin America or Africa, Afghanistan or Qatar, the response is remarkably uniform -- obstruction and obfuscation, hurdles and hindrances. In short, the good old-fashioned military runaround. I had hoped to take a walk around al-Udeid Air Base, perhaps get a glimpse of the jumbotron-sized screens and rows of computers in its Combined Air and Space Operations Center. I wanted to learn how the drawdown in Afghanistan was affecting life on the base.

Instead, I ended up sitting in the climate-controlled comfort of my hotel room, staring at a cloudless sky, typing these words behind double-paned glass that shielded me from the 106 degree heat outside. For my trouble, on my return to the United States, I was detained at Kennedy Airport in New York by agents of the Department of Homeland Security. Their question for me: Was I planning to fight against U.S. forces in Afghanistan?

Base Desires in Africa

If you are an American citizen, you’re really not supposed to know about operations at al-Udeid Air Base. The men and women there on your dime can’t even “mention the base name or host nation name in any unsecured communications.” Instead, they’re instructed to say that they are at an “undisclosed location in Southwest Asia” instead of “the Deid,” as they call it.

It isn’t the only base that the Pentagon wants to keep in the shadows. You’re also not supposed to know how many bases the U.S. military currently has in Africa. I learned that the hard way. As a start, let me say that, officially speaking, there is only a single U.S. facility on the entire continent that the military formally calls a “base”: Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, a tiny nation in the Horn of Africa. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) is adamant about this and takes great pains to emphasize it. Internally, however, they do admit that they also have forward operating sites (aka “enduring locations”), contingency security locations (which troops periodically rotate in and out of), and contingency locations (which are used only during ongoing operations). But don’t try to get an official list of these or even a simple count -- unless you’re ready for the old-fashioned runaround.

In May 2012, I made the mistake of requesting a list of all facilities used by the U.S. military in Africa broken down by country. Nicole Dalrymple of AFRICOM’s Public Affairs Office told me the command would look into it and would be in touch. I never heard from her again. In June, Pat Barnes, AFRICOM’s Public Affairs liaison at the Pentagon, shot down my request, admitting only that the U.S. military had a “a small and temporary presence of personnel” at “several locations in Africa.” Due to “force protection” issues, he assured me, he could not tell me “where our folks are located and what facilities they use.”

That July, with sparing assistance from AFRICOM, I published an article on “Secret Wars, Secret Bases, and the Pentagon’s ‘New Spice Route’ in Africa,” in which I attempted to shed light on a growing U.S. military presence on that continent. This included a previously ignored logistics network set up to service U.S. military operations, with critical nodes in Manda Bay, Garissa, and Mombasa in Kenya; Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda; Bangui and Djema in the Central African Republic; Nzara in South Sudan; and Dire Dawa in Ethiopia. I also drew attention to posts, airports, and other facilities used by Americans in Arba Minch in Ethiopia, Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, and the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean.

U.S. Africa Command took great exception to this. Colonel Tom Davis, their director of public affairs, wrote a detailed, irritated response. I replied to him and once the dust had settled, I asked him for, among other information, a full listing of what he called “temporary facilities” as well as all other outposts, camps, warehouses, supply depots, and anything else that might be used by U.S. personnel in Africa. He ignored my request. I followed up. Four days later, AFRICOM spokesman Eric Elliott emailed to say Colonel Davis was on leave, but added, “Let me see what I can give you in response to your request for a complete list of facilities. There will [be] some limits on the details we can provide because of the scope of the request.”

Were there ever!

That was August 2012. For months, I heard nothing. Not an apology for the wait, not a request for more time. A follow-up in late October was ignored. A note in early November was finally answered by still another AFRICOM spokesman, Lieutenant Commander Dave Hecht, who said he was now on the case and would get back to me with an update by the end of the week. You won’t be shocked to learn that the weekend came and went without a word. I sent another follow up. On November 16th, Hecht finally responded: “All questions now have answers. I just need the boss to review before I can release. I hope to have them to you by mid next week.”

Take a guess what happened next. Nada. Further emails went unanswered. It was December before Hecht replied: “All questions have been answered but are still being reviewed for release. Hopefully this week I can send everything your way.”

He didn’t.

In January 2013, answers to some other questions of mine finally arrived, but nothing on my request for information on U.S. bases. By now, Hecht, too, had disappeared and I was passed off to AFRICOM’s chief of media engagement, Benjamin Benson. When I asked about the ignored questions, he responded that my request “exceed[ed] the scope of this command’s activities, and of what we are resourced to research and provide under the Public Affairs program.” I should instead file a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In other words, I should begin what was guaranteed to be another endlessly drawn-out process.

I was, shall we say, irritated. Somehow, it had taken six months to get me nothing and send me elsewhere -- and somehow neither Colonel Davis, nor Eric Elliott, nor Dave Hecht had realized this. I said as much to Benson. He wrote back: “Lastly, you state, ‘I've been led astray for the better part of a year and intend to write about it’, which of course is your right to do in our free society. We expect that as a professional, you convey the correct facts, and ask that you note that we did research, and provide answers to the questions you posed.”

Well, here you go, Ben. Duly noted. But of course, the “correct facts” are that neither Benson nor anyone else at AFRICOM ever provided answers to the crucial basing questions I posed. And Benson continues not to provide them to this very day.

When we last spoke by telephone, several weeks ago, I reiterated that I understood he couldn’t offer me a list of the locations of American bases in Africa due to “security of operations,” so all I now wanted was a simple count of facilities in Africa. “That’s tricky. We have teams coming in and out of Africa to different locations all the time,” he replied. “Places that they might be, the range of possible locations can get really big, but can provide a really skewed image of where we are… versus other places where we have ongoing operations. So, in terms of providing number, I’d be at a loss of how to quantify this.”

It seemed easy enough to me: just count them and include the necessary disclaimers. So I asked if AFRICOM kept a count of where its troops were located. They did. So what was the problem? He launched into a monologue about the difficulty of ascertaining just what truly constituted “a location” and then told me: “We don’t have a way that we really count locations.”

It couldn’t have been clearer by then. They had a count of all locations, but couldn’t count them. They had lists of where all U.S. troops in Africa were based, but not a list of bases. It was a classic runaround in action.

The First Casualty

And don’t think that was the worst of it. The most dismissive response I’ve gotten recently from anyone whose salary we pay to keep us (nominally) informed about the U.S. military came from Marco Villalobos, the FOIA manager of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), responsible for Central America and South America.

Last year, reports surfaced of civilians killed during operations conducted or overseen by U.S. personnel in Honduras. In at least one instance, the Honduran Air Force shot down a civilian plane thanks in part, it seems, to intelligence provided by SOUTHCOM. Since the U.S. military is heavily involved in operations across Latin America, I requested records relating to civilian casualties resulting from all operations in the region.

That was in July 2012. In February 2013, I got a peculiar response from Villalobos, one I’ve never seen otherwise in hundreds of replies to FOIA requests that I’ve ever received from various government agencies. He didn’t say there were no such records. He didn’t tell me that I had contacted the wrong agency or bureau. Instead, he directed me to the United Nations Statistics Division for the relevant data.

The trouble is, the U.N. Statistics Division (UNSD) doesn’t collate U.S. military data nor is it devoted to tracking civilian casualties. Instead it provides breakdowns of big datasets, like the Food and Agriculture Organization’s figures on how many hectares of apricots were harvested in Afghanistan in 2007 (3,400) or the prevalence rate of contraceptive use for women ages 15 to 49 in Uganda in 2005 (19.7%).

I was surprised to say the least. And I wasn’t alone. When I checked in with the U.N., the Statistics Division wrote back: “could you please forward us the email you received from SOUTHCOM in which they suggest UNSD as a source, so we can contact them if they continue to give our address out in response to such inquiries which don't pertain to our work.”

So I called Villalobos to complain. It wasn’t his fault, he quickly assured me. The decision had been made, he claimed, by the director of personnel. I asked for his name, but Villalobos refused to give it: “He’s not a public person.”

That’s the nature of the runaround. Months later, you find yourself back in the same informational cul-de-sac. And when it comes to the U.S. military, it happens again and again and again. I had a similar experience trying to embed with U.S. units in Afghanistan. I was rebuffed repeatedly for reasons that seemed spurious to me. As a result, however, a never-used Afghan visa for that trip sits unstamped in my passport -- which brings me back to my recent trip to Qatar.

The American Taliban?

In the airport upon returning to the United States, I was singled out by a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent. He directed me to a “girl” at a far counter. When I got there, I was admonished by her for being in the wrong place. Finally, I was sent to see a third CBP officer at a different workstation. Think of it as the runaround before the runaround.

This agent proceeded to question me about the contents of my bag, pulled out my papers and began reading them. She also wanted to know about my profession. I said I was a writer. What did I write about? National security issues, I told her. She asked what I thought about national security and the role of the U.S. military in the world. In my estimation, I said, it tended to result in unforeseen consequences. “Like what?” she asked. So I described my most recent article on blowback from U.S. military efforts in Africa.

Did I write books?

“I do,” I replied.

“What are the titles?”

“The latest one is called Kill Anything That Moves.”

“Kill what?”

“Kill Anything That Moves.”

She turned to her computer, promptly Googled the book, went to the Amazon page, and began scrolling through the customer reviews. She asked if my book was, as the page said, a New York Times bestseller. I assured her it was. After a short while, she told me to stay put and disappeared into a back room with my personal papers -- writings, notes, reading materials. When she returned, she told me that she couldn’t conduct the rest of my “examination” in public. She would have to bring me “back.” I asked if there was a problem. No. Could I have my papers back? The answer was again no.

I was soon deposited in “Area 23” of New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and I was definitely the odd one out. Not that there weren’t plenty of other people there. The Muslim man in the taqiyah. Three women in head scarves. Another wearing a niqab. Everyone’s skin color was at least several shades darker than mine.

I waited for a while, taking notes, before my name was called by an Officer Mott. The badge on his shirt made that clear, but he spelled it out for me anyway. “It seems like you’re taking notes on everything, so I might as well get that out of the way,” Mott said visibly perturbed, especially when I asked for his full name. “I’m not giving you my first name,” he said with palpable disgust.

Like the previous CBP agent, he also asked about my writing interests. I told him it mostly centered on U.S. foreign policy.

“Are you for or against it?”

“Am I for foreign policy?” I asked.

“Well, I’m reading that your last book is Kill Anything That Moves. That was about what?”

“The Vietnam War.”

“What about the Vietnam War?”

“Civilian casualties.”

“Sensitive topic,” he said.

“Especially for the Vietnamese,” I replied.

“Well, in this day and age with the whole war going on, that’s a sensitive issue you’re writing about... Do you get any heat or problems writing about war and civilian casualties?”

“It comes with the territory,” I told him.

As he typed away at his computer, I asked why I was singled out. “I think because some of the material you have is of interest… What you’re writing, traveling with.” I asked how they would know what was in my bag before I was detained. “Why the officer stopped you is beyond me, but what the officer discovered is something of interest, especially for national security... It’s not every day you see someone traveling with information like this.”

It was probably true. The contents of my bag were splayed out before us. The most prominent and substantive document was “Qatar: Background and U.S. Relations,” a report prepared last year by the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

Agent Mott rifled through my papers, tapped at his keyboard some more, breathed in deeply and then launched into a series of questions designed to make sure, he told me, that nothing “jeopardizes our national security.”

“How long have you been writing about wars and things like that?”

“About 10 years.”

He did a double take, looked at my passport, and typed feverishly. “I thought you were younger,” he told me. I took it as a compliment. He wanted to know if I’d traveled anywhere in the last five years as he flipped through my passport, filled as it is with visas and entry and exit stamps from around the world. The answer was obviously yes. “Pakistan? Afghanistan?” he asked.

Immediately, I thought of the unused Afghan visa in my passport and started to explain. After instructing me to get a visa, the U.S. military had strung me along for months before deciding I couldn’t embed with certain units I requested, I told him.

“Doing journalistic stuff, not fighting with them or anything like that?”

Fighting? Was I really being accused of heading to Afghanistan to join the Taliban? Or maybe plotting to launch an insider attack? Was I really being questioned about this on the basis of having an Afghan visa and writing about national security issues? “Nope. I’m a writer,” I told him. “I cover the U.S. military, so I was going to cover the U.S. military.”

Agent Mott seemed satisfied enough. He finished his questions and sent me on my way.

The next morning, I checked my email, and found a message waiting for me. It was from the Media Embed Chief in Afghanistan. “You are receiving this email because in the past you have been an embed with ISAF [International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan] or requested an embed,” it read. “Your opinion and satisfaction are important to us.”

“You can’t make this shit up,” an old editor of mine was fond of saying when truth -- as it so often does -- proves stranger than fiction. This sequence of events certainly qualified. I could hardly believe my eyes, but there it was: a link to a questionnaire about how well served I was by my (nonexistent) 2012 embed in Afghanistan. Question number six asked: “During your embed(s) did you get the information and stories you require? If no please state why.”

Let me count the ways.

Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow at the Nation Institute. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. He is the author most recently of the New York Times bestseller Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. You can catch his conversation with Bill Moyers about that book by clicking here. His website is NickTurse.com. You can follow him on Tumblr and on Facebook. Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook or Tumblr. Check out the newest Dispatch book, Nick Turse’s The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases,

Oil Spill Discovered on Athabasca River, Alberta Regulator No-Show

First Nation discovers large petrochemical sheen on Athabasca River; Alberta's new energy regulator missing in action

by ACFN

FORT MCMURRAY - The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation is demanding answers and action from the Alberta government following reports of a large possibly petrochemical spill into the Athabasca River. The large visible petrochemical sheen may be from a previous spill that regulators failed to contain or from a new release. Either way it has been left unaddressed and has forced the community to close the communities water intake.

Early Saturday morning a community member from the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) reported a large oily sheen on the Athabasca river about 60 km north of Fort McMurray that according to his account stretched over 5 km.

The sheen, that from pictures and eye-witness account appears to be petrochemical in nature, was reported both to the Alberta Governments new Alberta Energy Regulator and the Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resources. After silence from both government bodies, Athabasca Chipewyan Chief Allan Adam flew over the site late Saturday afternoon reporting that the sheen now stretched for over 100 kms, and had soaked river banks. Nation members also took samples and pictures of the spill.

"Our Nation faces another toxic threat to our water supply and our calls for action are met by silence by the Alberta government and their new energy regulator. Our members appear to be the only world class monitoring system Alberta has," said Athabasca Chipewyan Chief Allan Adam.

The finding of the spill happened on the same day that hundreds of people from all across Canada gathered in Fort McMurray to participate in a healing walk through the inundated tar sands region.

"It's tragically ironic that we would find this sheen on the same day that we walk to heal the land from tar sands destruction," remarked Adam. "This spill is one of the number of reasons why we walk and is a oily reminder of Alberta's growing pipeline and tar sands problem. The Alberta government needs to address these problems, ignoring them doesn't make them go away."

Pictures taken of the spill can be viewed here: http://www.flickr.com/x/t/0092009/photos/itstimetoriseup/sets/72157634517109943



For more information contact:
Eriel Deranger, ACFN Communications Coordinator

Chemtrail Alert - Victoria, B.C. - Chemtrail Rating - HIGH

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Richard Atwell, Micheal Vonn, Janine Bandcroft Monday July 8, 2013

This Week on GR

by C. L. Cook - Gorilla-Radio.com

With so much political crapulence dirtying this country Canada's public sphere, from the rotting head of the prime minister's office, to the lowliest factotums of our own Capital Region District, the stench has become so overwhelming Big Media is forced to hold its nose and report the wretchedness.

Amidst this stink, it's good to see at least one odiferous disaster averted; for now.

Last week, the rank scheme to saddle a Vic West residential neighbourhood with a "biosolid" processing plant was unceremoniously flushed by the CRD, but not before they had pissed away millions of tax dollars. Richard Atwell is campaign organizer for StopABadPlan.ca, the group single-most responsible for the CRD's about face.

Listen. Hear.

Richard's a software engineer and Saanich resident whose work on the campaign to stop this more than badly thought out plan entailed a marriage of multi-media production, social networking, and good old-fashioned takin' it to the street demonstrations by those most threatened on Viewfield Road, their near neighbours, and citizens throughout the region opposed to both the ways and means deployed by Regional District directors to foist this 2+ billion dollar fiasco down our collective neck.

Richard Atwell in the first half.

And; Canada Day celebrations went off with a bigger bang than usual in Victoria last week. Or at least that's what the authorities would have us believe. The non-incident at the provincial Legislature Buildings has, heaven knows, been well publicized, but do Canadians fully appreciate what the case against John Nuttall and Amanda Korody means for both justice and civil rights in this country?

Micheal Vonn is Policy Director of the BC Civil Liberties Association and is a frequent speaker on matters of privacy, national security, policing, surveillance, and free speech. Vonn is also a past Adjunct Professor in UBC's Faculty of Law and in the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies where she taught civil liberties and information ethics. Micheal is also a regular guest instructor for UBC's College of Health Disciplines Intersdisciplinary Elective in HIV/AIDS Care. She was too awarded the 2010 AccolAIDS Award for social and political advocacy benefiting communities affected by HIV?AIDS.

Micheal Vonn and the not quite Great Canada Day Gunpowder Plot in the second half.

And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV Radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with some of what's good to do in and around Victoria in the coming week. But first, Richard Atwell and a mighty smell emanating the CRD's floundering waste disposal plans.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca.  He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.ca/

G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.

Some past guests include: M. Junaid Alam, M. Shahid Alam, Gilad Atzmon, Joel Bakan, Maude Barlow, Ramzy Baroud, William Blum, Luciana Bohne, William Bowles, Mordecai Briemberg, Helen Caldicott, Noam Chomsky, Michel Chossudovsky, Diane Christian, Paul Cienfuegos, David Cromwell, Ezili Danto, Jon Elmer, Yves Engler, Laura Flanders, Amy Goodman, Denis Halliday, Chris Hedges, Julia Butterfly Hill, Robert Jensen, Dahr Jamail, Diana Johnstone, Malalai Joya, Kathy Kelly, Naomi Klein, Frances Moore Lappe, Ingmar Lee, Dave Lindorff, Alexandra Morton, Loretta Napoleoni, Andrew Nikiforuk, Ken O'Keefe, Greg Palast, Michael Parenti, Robert Parry, John Pilger, Kevin Pina, Paul Craig Roberts, David Rovics, Danny Schechter, David Schindler, Vandana Shiva, Tim Shorrock, Norman Solomon, Jean Saint-Vil, Harvey Wasserman, Paul Watson, Bernard Weiner, Andy Worthington, Mickey Z., Howard Zinn and many others.

American Piracy - Air, Land, and Sea

Air Piracy Over Europe

by John Pilger - CounterPunch

Imagine the aircraft of the President of France being forced down in Latin America on “suspicion” that it was carrying a political refugee to safety – and not just any refugee but someone who has provided the people of the world with proof of criminal activity on an epic scale.

Imagine the response from Paris, let alone the “international community”, as the governments of the West call themselves. To a chorus of baying indignation from Whitehall to Washington, Brussels to Madrid, heroic special forces would be dispatched to rescue their leader and, as sport, smash up the source of such flagrant international gangsterism. Editorials would cheer them on, perhaps reminding readers that this kind of piracy was exhibited by the German Reich in the 1930s.

The forcing down of Bolivian President Evo Morales’s plane — denied air space by France, Spain and Portugal, followed by his 14-hour confinement while Austrian officials demanded to “inspect” his aircraft for the “fugitive” Edward Snowden — was an act of air piracy and state terrorism. It was a metaphor for the gangsterism that now rules the world and the cowardice and hypocrisy of bystanders who dare not speak its name.

In Moscow for a summit of gas-producing nations, Morales had been asked about Snowden who remains trapped in Moscow airport. “If there were a request [for political asylum],” he said, “of course, we would be willing to debate and consider the idea.” That was clearly enough provocation for the Godfather. “We have been in touch with a range of countries that had a chance of having Snowden land or travel through their country,” said a US state department official.

The French — having squealed about Washington spying on their every move, as revealed by Snowden — were first off the mark, followed by the Portuguese. The Spanish then did their bit by enforcing a flight ban of their airspace , giving the Godfather’s Viennese hirelings enough time to find out if Snowden was indeed invoking article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”

Those paid to keep the record straight have played their part with a cat-and-mouse media game that reinforces the Godfather’s lie that this heroic young man is running from a system of justice, rather than preordained, vindictive incarceration that amounts to torture: ask Bradley Manning and the living ghosts in Guantanamo.

Historians seem to agree that the rise of fascism in Europe might have been averted had the liberal or left political class understood the true nature of its enemy. The parallels today are very different; but the Damocles sword over Snowden, like the casual abduction of the Bolivian president, ought to stir us into recognising the true nature of the enemy.

Snowden’s revelations are not merely about privacy, nor civil liberty, nor even mass spying. They are about the unmentionable: that the democratic facades of the United States now barely conceal a systematic gangsterism historically identified with if not necessarily the same as fascism. On Tuesday, a US drone killed 16 people in North Waziristan, “where many of the world’s most dangerous militants live”, said the few paragraphs I read. That by far the world’s most dangerous militants had hurled the drones was not a consideration. President Obama personally sends them every Tuesday.

In his acceptance of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature, Harold Pinter referred to “a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed”. He asked why “the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities” of the Soviet Union were well known in the West while America’s crimes were “superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged”. The most enduring silence of the modern era covered the extinction and dispossession of countless human beings by a rampant America and its agents. “But you wouldn’t know it,” said Pinter. “It never happened. Even while it was happening it never happened. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.”

This hidden history – not really hidden, of course, but excluded from the consciousness of societies drilled in American myths and priorities – has never been more vulnerable to exposure. Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing, like that of Bradley Manning and Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, threatens to break the silence Pinter described. In revealing a vast Orwellian police state apparatus servicing history’s greatest war-making machine, they illuminate the true extremism of the 21st century. Unprecedented, Germany’s Der Spiegel has described the Obama administration as “soft totalitarianism”. If the penny is finally falling, we might all look closer to home.

John Pilger’s film on Australia, Utopia, will be released in the autumn.