Clown Posse Politics: America's Somethin' for Nothin' Ethos

The New Abnormal

by James Howard Kunstler - Clusterfuck Nation

The collective state of mind in the USA these days may be even more peculiar than what went on in Germany in the early 1930s, when the Nazis were freely elected to lead the country and reconstructed the battered national psyche into a superman cult that soon beat a path to mass death and ruin.

America has its own way of going crazy. We don't goose-step to tragedy; we coalesce into an insane clown posse and stumble into it by pratfall -- juggaloes dancing backwards off the cliff edge.

We've been softened up and made extra-stupid on a 60-year-long diet of TV and kreme-filled donuts. Instead of a "master race," our political fantasies revolve around a master wish - to get something for nothing.

Want to feel good about yourself? Smoke some crank. Want to become economically secure? Buy a Powerball ticket or drive to the local casino. Want political esteem? Plug a flag pin into your lapel. Want status? Borrow free money from the Federal Reserve at zero interest and arbitrage it into massive earnings for your primary dealer bank. All these behaviors are the consequence of a culture that elevated advertising to such a high social good, it ended up drowning in its own manufactured bullshit.

A subset of our master wish has been on vivid display in recent months, namely the idea that God has blessed the USA with a limitless supply of new oil that will allow us to keep driving to WalMart forever. This propaganda from an oil industry desperate for capital investment has been swallowed whole by people in authority who ought to know better, just as that same class of people in Germany of 1934 should have known better about what they were bargaining for in economic well-being with the Nazi agenda. In our case, the propaganda drumbeat is being led by formerly respectable news organizations. The New York Times, National Public Radio, Bloomberg News, Forbes, and The Atlantic Magazine are media giants that have lately spread the "good news" that America will soon be 1) "energy independent," 2) the world's leading oil exporter (greater than Saudi Arabia is now!), and the "go-to nation" for cheap manufacturing.

All of these claims are false, by the way. The American way-of-life was designed to run on $20-a-barrel oil, not $90-a-barrel oil, and "new technology" has not changed that. The unfortunate and, to some extent, mendacious memes about the wonders of "new technology" have only snookered the public into a false sense of security about a future that will disappoint them badly and probably provoke an extreme political reaction as the reality of our predicament sweeps through daily life.

Most of the current "endless oil" fantasy revolves around shale oil. Just to get a visual idea of what this amounts to, consider this map. It depicts the two major shale oil production regions of the USA: the Bakken in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford "play" in Texas. Bakken production is confined almost entirely to four counties in North Dakota (Williams, Mountrail, McKenzie, Dunn). The Eagle Ford region touches perhaps ten Texas counties. Now, realize that the oil fields all over the rest of the USA (including Alaska) are in decline. Here's where the "bonanza" of new oil all comes from:




The oil coming out of these places is high cost and low flow-rate oil. This is exactly the opposite of what US oil production used to be (low cost and high flow-rate) when we were busy building all the freeways, strip malls, housing subdivisions, suburban office parks and all of the other stranded assets that now make up the infrastructure of daily life in this country. Those were the days when you could pound a single pipe vertically 1000 feet down (not much deeper than many home water wells) into the temperate wheatfields of Oklahoma (drive to work in shirtsleeve weather!) and after that modest investment in drilling you could kick back and depend on a great flow rate (5,000 barrels-a-day, not unusual) of sweet light petroleum for years.

Horizontal drilling (often more than 10,000 feet down + many "laterals" an additional 10,000 feet horizontally) and then fracturing "tight" rock for shale oil is not only a way larger capital expense (lots of steel!) but the flow rates per well (82 barrels-a-day average) are laughable compared to the halcyon days of conventional oil -- little better than "stripper" wells. Consider also that shale oil well flow-rates decline greater than 60 percent in the first year (rapidly thereafter, too) and you can see easily that there will be no "kicking back" to run the pump-jacks like cash registers, as in the old days. In fact, the rapid depletion only prompts more frantic drilling and re-drilling to keep the production at its current rate - the "Red Queen Syndrome" ("I'm running as fast as I can to stay where I am"), which means fantastic capital expenditure to keep drilling and fracking more wells (even more steel!). Consider also, that the small "sweet spots" in the shale oil regions were the ones drilled first (in earnest after 2003), for the simple reason that they were the most promising.

This was the "low hanging fruit" -- easy to pick. Outside these sweet spots the oil may be too meager or difficult or costly to bother drilling for.

This is a picture of a boomlet that may run a few more years -- if the banking system doesn't implode and the massive stream of capital doesn't quit flowing to the shale counties. The excitement will all be over before 2020, but I suspect that troubles in finance and banking will put the schnitz on the shale gas mania long before that date. What will happen when the American public discovers that they were lied to about yet another important matter? The discovery will coincide with very severe changes in daily life that won't be avoidable. Everyone will be affected. Many will be impoverished and suffer real hardship. That's when the public goes apeshit and starts tearing down the house.

Apart from the issue of sheer economic suffering and all the damage that will ensue, consider that it will be generations before anyone believes the "authorities" again -- though, like the oil age itself, the era of giant national media will probably prove to be a one-shot deal, too. Future generations -- if they are lucky -- may read the news on one-page circulating broadsides, printed laboriously in hand-set type by letterpress. Or maybe they'll be reduced to just parsing out rumors.

Weikileaks Reveal US State Dept. Role in Promoting GMO

Wikileaks Cables Reveal State Dept. Promoting GMOs Abroad

by TRNN

Darcey O'Callaghan: US embassies are aggressively and systematically promoting biotechnology and GMO food abroad.

On May 25 in 36 countries around the world there will be protests against Monsanto and the promotion of GMO in agriculture and animal food products. Now joining us to talk about Monsanto and the role of the U.S. State Department in promoting Monsanto and GMO around the world is Darcy O'Callaghan. She's the international policy director at Food & Water Watch. The organization works to promote local control of food systems and to prevent the privatization of public water resources. 

Marine Harvest Applies "Green" Cosmetics to Fish Farm Practices

Lipstick on a Pig - WWF's Makeover At Marine Harvest

by Don Staniford - Green Around the Gills

Whilst Marine Harvest was completing the final stages of their hostile takeover of salmon farming giant Cermaq in Norway, WWF Scotland was applying the finishing touches to a green makeover. The Guardian newspaper reported (21 May):


Marine Harvest's green makeover started in 2008 with a £90,000 a year  'partnership' with WWF Norway.


WWF Scotland joined the Marine Harvest makeover team with a gushing tribute yesterday (21 May). 


Alan Sutherland, Managing Director at Marine Harvest Scotland said in a WWF Scotland press release (21 May):

“We very much welcome the introduction of ASC certification as we are committed to the sustainable development of salmon farming globally. This is a relatively new industry and we have been working hard in recent years to improve our environmental performance and our sustainability. This is a process which is ongoing and the ASC accreditation will provide us with a framework to work within. Our plans for investment over the next five to 10 years will help us fulfill the strict criteria in the ASC standards and we aim to have all of our farms certified under the scheme by 2020. In the meantime we will report on our progress towards that target.”

Lang Banks, Director of WWF Scotland said:

“The salmon farming industry’s activities have quite rightly come under close scrutiny recently, so this announcement is really good news for Scotland’s environment. However, to deliver the greatest possible impact, we need to see the standards adopted at an industry-wide level. We therefore call upon all fish farm operators to follow Marine Harvest’s lead and seek accreditation by the ASC.

“As many of the ASC standards go beyond existing legal requirements in Scotland, meeting them will certainly be a challenge. However, it is only when all salmon farm operators embrace the standards that we will know if, as an industry, they are really serious about operating sustainably and reducing their impacts on the environment."

Chris Ninnes CEO of ASC said:

“We are very excited that Marine Harvest has chosen to take the lead in moving the salmon industry towards taking greater responsibility for its environmental and social footprint. Through meeting the ASC standard for responsible farming and communicating this to the market through ASC's on-product logo, farms can clearly show consumers that their seafood has been produced so that environmental and social impacts have been minimised.”

Ally Dingwall, Aquaculture & Fisheries Manager at Sainsbury’s said:

"Through the partnership we already have with Marine Harvest, Sainsbury's is the largest UK retailer of responsibly sourced RSPCA Freedom Food Salmon. Today's announcement is a great move forward, the ASC standard will encourage good practise and continued improvement. It's leading initiatives like this that support our own 2020 target for all the fish and seafood we sell to be independently certified sustainable - which makes up part of our wider 20x20 Sustainability Plan."

Read more via WWF Greenwashes Marine Harvest!

The Aquaculture Stewardship Council shameless selling of farmed salmon as "responsible" and "sustainable" may yet trigger a complaint to their namesake - Advertising Standards Canada (as well as advertising authorities in Europe and around the world!). 

Read more on the ASC via "Abominable Salmon Council - Buyer Beware!"

WWF's toadying greenwashing of the world's largest salmon farming polluter (aka Marine Harvest) would make even Miss Piggy blush with embarrassment.   It's not easy being green - just ask Kermit. 


However you dress up Marine Harvest's green makeover it's still difficult to escape the conclusion that salmon farming's "environmental" claims are nothing more than hogwash.



Scrape off all the make-up and the ''Responsible Salmon Aquaculture Standards" being applied by WWF and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council do not look pretty at all. 


For example, the "responsible" standards allow the killing of marine mammals, escapes, sea lice infestation, the spread of infectious diseases and the use of toxic chemicals including artificial colourings to make the farmed salmon look pink.  

Read more on the artificial colourings such as Canthaxanthin (E161g) and Astaxanthin used to turn the flesh of farmed salmon pink online via "Silent Spring of the Sea".  


 More details via "Ugly in Pink: Cosmetically Challenged Farmed Salmon!" 


The shameful standard also allows salmon farmers to drug unhealthy farmed salmon with up to three doses of antibiotics!!! 



WWF came under fire last year by film-maker Wilfried Huismann for their support of Marine Harvest's "floating pharmacies" in Chile.  


The ''Responsible Salmon Aquaculture Standards" actually specify the number of "lethal incidents" permitted on salmon farms - with nine animals including two marine mammals such as seals or sea lions allowed to be killed!



Sign a petition to "Stop the Certification of Farmed Salmon as ‘Sustainable’ and ‘Responsible’’

No wonder that WWF is now labelled the "Killer Panda"!


Even the David Suzuki Foundation and the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform, who normally cravenly kowtow to the salmon farming industry, were vocal in their criticism of the WWF/ASC standards.

"CAAR is particularly concerned that the standard falls short in a number of significant areas including elimination of disease transmission between farmed and wild fish," stated a press release.  "It does not adequately address the impacts of existing exotic species. While there are some important limits on the use and discharge of antibiotics and toxic sea lice chemicals, the standard does not eliminate them. The standard is intended to certify individual farms, and thus struggles to deal with the cumulative impacts of the industry and its potential expansion."

Pew Environment Group also expressed serious concerns at the final draft of the standards:

Read Pew's comments in full online here and read more background via "Pepé Le Pew Loves Farmed Salmon!"

"The proposed certification by WWF promises to legitimize environmentally and socially damaging forms of aquaculture in the name of cheap prawns and salmon," Natasha Ahmad, secretary of Asia Solidarity Against Industrial Aquaculture, told SeafoodSource back in 2009. "It’s high time that WWF stops pandering to the interests of big business and instead begins to listen to the voices of real people that rely on the oceans and forests to survive."

Read more about Marine Harvest's appalling environmental track record online via "Who's Calling Who A Convicted Criminal?"



From 1 June 2013, salmon farmers in Europe can even use chicken and pig products in their fish feed. 


The salmon farming industry's desire to use pig and chicken products is not altogether suprising given the fact that salmon feed giant Nutreco (a former owner of Marine Harvest) also supplies feed for the poultry, pig, ruminant and livestock industry. 



In February 2013, after wrapping up the farmed salmon standards and passing them onto the ASC, WWF's director of aquaculture left to join Nutreco (Jose Villalon also used to work for Marine Harvest). In fact, the ASC board now includes representatives of WWF, Nutreco and Marine Harvest. 


Read more via "Panda Porn: WWF Leaps Into Bed With Salmon Giant Nutreco"

Next time you go to the supermarket, beware flying pigs and "100% Sustainable" farmed salmon!


For more details read:
"Fatwa On Salmon (Don't Worry Mr. Rushdie!)"
"Backlash Against Chicken & Pork in Farmed Fish!"
"French Say "Non" to Chicken & Pork in Farmed Salmon!"

Syria as Tipping Point for Russia/U.S. Rivalry Redux

Syria as a Game-Changer: US Political Impotence in the Middle East

by Ramzy Baroud - Palestine Chronicle

In an article published May 15, 2013, American historical social scientist Immanuel Wallerstein wrote; 

“Nothing illustrates more the limitations of Western power than the internal controversy its elites are having in public about what the United States in particular and western European states should be doing about the civil war in Syria.”

Those limitations are palpable in both language and action. A political and military vacuum created by past US failures and forced retreats after the Iraq war made it possible for countries like Russia to reemerge on the scene as an effective player.

It is most telling that over two years after the Syrian uprising-turned bloody civil war, the US continues to curb its involvement by indirectly assisting anti-Bashar al-Assad regime opposition forces, through its Arab allies and Turkey. Even its political discourse is indecisive and often times inconsistent.

Concurrently, Russia’s position remains unswerving and constantly advancing while the US is pushed into a corner, demonstrating incapacity to react except for condemnations and mere statements. This is to the displeasure of its Arab allies. Russia’s recent delivery of sophisticated anti-ship missiles and its own buildup of warships in the eastern Mediterranean is a case in point. The move was condemned by the Obama administration as one that is “ill-timed and very unfortunate,” according to a statement by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as reported in the LA Times on May 17.

But this American attitude in the region is fairly new. Behind it stands a history so bloody and filled with imprudent foreign policy. Regardless of how the US decides to move on Syria, the chances are that a return to its old dominant approach is no longer an option.

Indeed, the current American political impotence in the Middle East is unprecedented, at least since the rapid disintegration of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990’s. The dissolution of the Soviet Union had ushered in the rise of a unipolar world, wholly managed by the United States. The rise of the uncontested American hegemony represented a shift in historical dialectics, where great powers found their match and the rest of the world, more or less, accommodated the ensuing competition.

Then, the US acted quickly to assert its dominance starting with hasty military adventures such as the invasion of Panama in 1989. A much more calculated move followed with a devastating war against Iraq in 1990-91. In Panama the objective was to remind the US’s southern neighbors that the region’s cop was still on duty and was capable of intervening at a moment’s notice to rearrange the entire political paradigm in any way that Washington deemed necessary - As this has been the case since the CIA-orchestrated coup and war in Guatemala in 1954 and even earlier.

The US's massive military involvement in Iraq, however, was that of a conqueror who arrived with an entourage of many countries – regional and western allies – to claim the spoils resulting from the end of the protracted Cold War. It was an arrogant show of force since the target was a single Arab country with humble military and economic means vs. major military powers from near and far. The war devastated Iraq, as its initial aerial bombing campaign alone involved the dropping of 88,500 tons of bombs. Many new weapons were used and tested, while the US media and public celebrated the prowess of their military. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died or were wounded as a result of one of the most asymmetrical wars in history.

Trying to capitalize on its military triumph, Washington quickly pushed for a political settlement between its closest ally, Israel, and Arab countries. The logic behind the Madrid Conference in 1991 was achieving pseudo peace that catered to Israel’s interests, while opening up the gate of normalization between Israel and its neighbors. Moreover, the US hoped to achieve some sort of ‘stability’ that would allow it to manage the Middle East region and its ample resources in a less hostile environment. Eventually, Israel managed to negotiate its own political deal with the Palestinians, thus dividing Arab ranks and ensuring that the ‘peace talks’ outcome was entirely consistent with Israel’s colonial ambitions.

As years passed, the US and Israeli political visions moved even closer, but with Washington eventually becoming a mere conduit to Israeli colonial objectives. This fact was underscored repeatedly under the George W. Bush administration, which compounded US failure in the region with even more disastrous and dangerous wars.

A major fault in US foreign policy is that it is almost entirely reliant on military power – as in the ability to blow things up. The US war on Iraq which, in various forms, extended from 1990 to 2011, included a devastating blockade and ended with a brutal invasion. This long war was as unscrupulous as it was very violent. Aside from its overwhelming human toll, it was placed within a horrid political strategy aimed at exploiting the country’s existing sectarian and other fault lines, therefore triggering a civil war and sectarian hatred from which Iraq is unlikely to cover for many years.

But limitations of US military power became quite obvious in later years. The empire was no longer able to bridge the divide between translating its dominance on the ground – itself increasingly challenged by local resistance groups - into a level of political progress required to achieve the minimum amount of ‘stability’. Moreover, an economic recession, coupled with the Iraqi retreat and an equally costly debacle in Afghanistan – forced the new administration in Washington, under the leadership of President Barack Obama to rethink Bush’s earlier quest for global hegemony. Massive military cuts were soon to follow. Concurrently, the imbalance of global power was slowly, quietly but surely being equalized with the rise of China as a new possible contender.

In the midst of the US transition and policy rethink, an upheaval struck the Middle East. Its manifestations – revolutions, civil wars, regional mayhem and conflicts of all sorts – reverberated beyond the Middle East. Shrinking and rising empires alike took notice. Fault lines were quickly determined and exploited. Players changed positions or jockeyed for advanced ones, as a new Great Game was about to begin. The so-called ‘Arab Spring’ was rapidly becoming a game-changer in a region that seemed resistant to transformations of any kind.

The transformation of the Middle East – promising at times, very gory and bloody at others – arrived at a time when the US was making forced adjustments in its military priorities. Putting greater focus on the Pacific region and the South China Sea are such examples. Without much notice, it was forced to reengage with the Middle East, as a whole – not a country at a time. Only then, its weaknesses were seriously exposed and its lack of influence became palpable.

Bankrupt is maybe an appropriate term to use in describing the current US policy in the Middle East. Imprudent military adventures devastated the region but achieved no long term objectives. Reckless policies that are predicated on trying to exploit, as opposed to understand the Middle East and its complex political and historical formation and the insistence on keeping Israel a main priority in its approach to the vastly shifting political lines, will unlikely to bode well for US interests.

However, unlike the early 1990’s, when the US moved to reshape the entire region and established permanent military presence, new dynamics are forcing US hands to change tactics. In this new reality, the US is incapable of reshaping reality but merely trying to offset or control its unfavorable outcomes.

“What the United States (and western Europe) want to do is ‘control’ the situation,’ Immanuel Wallerstein argued. “They will not be able to do it. Hence the screams of the ‘interventionists’ and the foot-dragging of the ‘prudent.’ It is a lose-lose for the west, while not being at the same time a ‘win’ for people in the Middle East.”

This ‘lose-lose’ scenario might not necessarily translate to a complete American foreign policy meltdown in the near future, but will certainly open the possibility for new/old players to make serious gains, Russia being a lead example. This will likely compel the US to change tactics, despite the incessant objections of neoconservative forces and the Israeli lobby.


- Ramzy Baroud (ramzybaroud.net) is a widely published and translated author. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).

A Mountain by Another Name: WSÁNEĆ Nations Reclaim Mt. Douglas' Original Name 'PKOLS'

WSÁNEĆ Nations officially request name change from Mt. Douglas to PKOLS

by WSÁNEĆ (Saanich) First Nations

Victoria, Coast Salish Territory, BC — The WSÁNEĆ (Saanich) First Nations, led by hereditary chief WEC'KINEM (Eric Pelkey), have written to the Province of British Columbia's Geographic Names Office to officially request the restoration of the indigenous name PKOLS to the promontory of land currently known as Mount Douglas. A second letter to the District of Saanich proposes "jointly determining" an appropriate name for the municipal park surrounding the mountain.

Reclamation of PKOLS
Wednesday, May 22, 2013, 

from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Mount Douglas Park

The requests coincide with a Day of Action taking place today May 22nd, as indigenous nations and non-indigenous residents converge on the base of the mountain at Shelbourne Street and Cedar Hill Road at 5:00pm for a march to the summit, where the signing of the Douglas Treaty will be re-enacted and a new sign erected by the WSÁNEĆ Nations. Food will also be served to all attendees.

"We are inviting the Mayor of Saanich, his Council, and all residents of Saanich and neighbouring municipalities to join with us in restoring and celebrating the original name PKOLS," says WEC'KINEM (Eric Pelkey). "Everyone is welcome. This is an invitation to all people and nations to join. This mountain holds a special place in the culture and history of the WSÁNEĆ people. Restoring the original name PKOLS is something our elders have been encouraging us to do for a long time. Today we take this important step in co-operation with non-indigenous allies in our community."

PKOLS (pronounced p’cawls), which can be translated as “White Rock” or “White Head”, reflects the Indigenous oral history of the area. Stories of PKOLS go back to nearly the beginning of time for WSÁNEĆ (Saanich) people. Historically, it has been an important meeting place; and geological findings indicate that it was the last place glaciers receded from on southern Vancouver Island.

“It is a very important place for our people,” said Pelkey. “PKOLS is a part of our creation story within the WSÁNEĆ nation; and it’s where our treaty was first agreed to in 1852." 

James Douglas and his men met with WSÁNEĆ chiefs at the summit of PKOLS to discuss a treaty between the local Indigenous peoples and the settler newcomers. Outnumbered by WSÁNEĆ warriors, Douglas offered blankets and money and the eventual signing of the Douglas Treaty was understood to be a promise that the WSÁNEĆ people would not be interfered with. But this promise has since been broken.

International social activists including award-winning journalist Naomi Klein, acclaimed linguist Noam Chomsky and feminist Judy Rebick have endorsed today's Day of Action. CBC Radio host Shelagh Rogers is also among the group of endorsers, and Rogers will be attending the action in Saanich, BC.

The following community organizations and individuals have also endorsed the Day of Action: AIDS Vancouver Island, Council of Canadians, Freeskool, Greenpeace, the Indigenous Nationhood Movement, Indigenous Waves Radio, International Federation of Iranian Refugees, Keepers of the Athabasca, Lifecycles Project Society, Los Altos Institute, Rising Tide Vancouver, the Sierra Club of BC, SocialCoast.org, Social Environmental Alliance, South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy, Together Against Poverty Society, University of Victoria Indigenous Governance Program, Vancouver Island Community Forest Action Network, Victoria Coalition for Survivors, Victoria Idle No More, and The Warren Undergraduate Review.

For more information please visit: http://PKOLS.org. Members of the public and the media are welcome to attend the reclamation, which begins at 5:00pm May 22nd at the base of the mountain, where Shelbourne Street meets Cedar Hill Road.

- 30 -
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


May 22, 2013
Spokesperson:
WEC'KINEM (Eric Pelkey) – Tsawout First Nation,
Supporting Media Contacts:
Taiaiake Alfred - Indigenous Nationhood Movement,
Jarrett Martineau – Media Liaison, Indigenous Nationhood Movement,
Eric Nordal – SocialCoast

No Defense: Environment Coalition Denounces EDF Fracking Support

MORE THAN 5 DOZEN CITIZEN, ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS TO SIGNAL EDF DOES NOT SPEAK FOR THEM ON FRACKING

by CivilSocietyInstitute.org

More than 60 leading grassroots and national organizations focused on citizen and environmental issues will send a message Wednesday to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) disapproving of the group's willingness to be coopted by industry interests on the issue of hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking") for shale gas.

The groups are concerned that the shale gas industry is exploiting its connection with EDF to falsely suggest that local green and other groups are on board with the agenda of the fracking industry. In fact, EDF is largely isolated among grassroots and even national groups in its willingness to cater to the direction of the natural gas industry. In this case, the view of grassroots groups are particularly key since they directly represent the populations that would be hurt the most by fracking in their backyards.

News event speakers will be:

* Gail Pressberg, senior program director, Civil Society Institute;

* Bruce Ferguson, co-founder, Catskills Citizens for Clean Energy; and

* Vivian Stockman, project coordinator, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.

The full text of the groups' letter to EDF will be available at the time of the news event.

TO PARTICIPATE: You can join this live, phone-based news conference (with full, two-way Q&A) at 1:30 p.m. EDT on May 22, 2013 by dialing 1 (800) 860-2442. Ask for the "Fracking EDF" news event.

CAN'T PARTICIPATE?: A streaming audio replay of the news event will be available on the Web at http://www.civilsocietyinstitute.org as of 5 p.m. EDT on May 22, 2013.

CONTACT: Will Harwood, (703) 276-3255 or wharwood@hastingsgroup.com.

Based in Newton, MA, the nonprofit and nonpartisan Civil Society Institute (http://www.CivilSocietyInstitute.org) is a think tank that serves as a catalyst for change by creating problem-solving interactions among people, and between communities, government and business that can help to improve society. Since 2003, CSI has conducted more than 25 major national and state-level surveys and reports on energy and auto issues, including vehicle fuel-efficiency standards, consumer demand for hybrids/other highly-fuel efficient vehicles, global warming and renewable energy. In collaboration with the Environmental Working Group, the Civil Society Institute has initiated the American Clean Energy Agenda (http://www.americancleanenergyagenda.org/), an effort calling for bold steps to move the United States toward a clean, safe energy future, which has been endorsed by over 110 organizations representing more than 1.7 million Americans.

Raven Reversal: Proposed Vancouver Island Coal Mine Set Back

Province, Public Opposition Halt Raven Coal Mine Proposal

by Damien Gillis - The Canadian.org 

A May 16 decision by the BC Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) to reject the proposed Raven Coal Mine on Vancouver Island should be seen as a victory for citizen mobilization. The project has sparked widespread protest in communities around the proposed mine and in Port Alberni, where a coal port is proposed to export the product to Asia.

The decision, made known in a letter from the EAO to the project's proponent last week, sends the ironically named Compliance Coal Corporation back to square one with its project - owing to an abundance of unanswered questions in its 114-page summary application document. The project is a joint-venture between Canadian, Japanese and Korean companies and would see a mine built in the midst of a thriving shellfish industry in Fanny Bay, which employs 600 locals.

Having gone through the early stages of environmental assessment over the past couple years, the project was denied the opportunity to proceed further with its current proposal. A jubilant John Snyder of CoalWatch Comox Valley - a group formed to deal with the threat of the mine - remarked on the verdict, "A review of the screening comments seems to indicate significant gaps in the Application, some of it having to do with public, First Nations, and stakeholder consultation; hydrology issues; and marine baseline studies."

Snyder added, "There’s no doubt that public scrutiny and the concerns voiced by local governments, First Nations, and stakeholders like the BC Shellfish Growers Association, played a role in this decision by the EAO. While Compliance could decide to resubmit another Application, this rejection by the EAO adds to an already significant headwind Compliance is facing in getting their project approved."

Groups like Snyder's and Coal Free Alberni had helped drive hundreds of people out to packed public hearings on the mine - and a near-record 5,000 public submissions addressing a draft document referred to as the AIR/EIS (Application Information Requirement/Environmental Impact Statement). The local K'ómoks First Nation made its opposition known as well.

In a statement issued today by Compliance in response to the BC EAO's decision, CEO John Tapics downplayed the challenges facing the project's future, noting, "The screening review is a scan of the Application for the purposes of determining whether the AIR have been met, and does not constitute an in depth review to determine whether or not issues have been addressed and resolved to EAO’s satisfaction. Receipt of Application screening comments is typical and not unexpected after a first review."

Tapics indicated his company's intention to submit a new draft AIR/EIS document addressing the many unanswered questions in the original: "The Company and its consultants are in the process of reviewing the comments returned by the EAO and plan to provide clarification or additional information and then resubmit the Application for further review once the comments have been adequately addressed."

Regardless of the company's next steps, the initial rejection of the project is strong validation the public campaign against it - which is sure to be even more emboldened to battle Compliance should it follow through with a second pass at building Raven Coal Mine. The decision, says Wilderness Committee's Island campaigner Torrance Coste, is yet "another indication that this mine doesn't belong on Vancouver Island."]



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.

Nuclear Brinkmanship: San Onofre Perched on the Edge

San Onofre at the No Nukes Brink

by Harvey Wasserman - EcoWatch.com

January, it seemed the restart of San Onofre Unit 2 would be a corporate cake walk.

With its massive money and clout, Southern California Edison was ready to ram through a license exception for a reactor whose botched $770 million steam generator fix had kept it shut for a year.

But a funny thing has happened on the way to the restart: a no nukes groundswell has turned this routine rubber stamping into an epic battle the grassroots just might win.

Indeed, if ever there was a time when individual activism could have a magnified impact, this is it.

This comes as the nuclear industry is in nearly full retreat. Two U.S. reactors are already down this year. Yet another proposed project has just been cancelled in North Carolina. And powerful grassroots campaigns have pushed numerous operating reactors to the brink of extinction throughout the U.S., Europe and Japan, where all but two reactors remain shut since Fukushima.

In California, it's San Onofre that's perched at the brink.

By all accounts Southern California Edison should have the clout to restart it with ease. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been a notorious rubber stamp for decades. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which decides how much the utilities can gouge from the ratepayers, has long been in Edison's pocket. State water quality regulations could force Edison to build cooling towers, a very expensive proposition that would likely lead to a quick retirement. But Gov. Brown has been deafeningly silent on the issue.

San Onofre sits in an earthquake/tsunami zone halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. At least 8 million people live within a 50 mile radius, many millions more within 100 miles. The reactors are a stone's throw from both a major interstate and the high tide line, with a 14-foot flood wall, a bare fraction of the height of the tsunami that overwhelmed Fukushima.

San Onofre Unit 1 was shut in 1992 by steam generator issues. Edison recently spent some three-quarters of a billion dollars upgrading the steam generators for Units 2 and 3. But the pipes have leaked and failed. Units 2 and 3 have been shut since January 2012. Edison has now asked the NRC for permission to run Unit 2 at 70 percent power for five months to see how the reactor might do. An NRC panel has termed the idea "experimental."

Edison is desperate to get the reactor running before summer. But in the wake of Fukushima, and in the midst of a major boom in solar energy, southern California is rising up to stop that from happening.

* A dozen cities, towns and public organizations—including a unanimous Los Angeles city council and the public school district of San Diego—have asked that public hearings and/or further in-depth, transparent investigations be held before the reactors reopen.

* U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) have asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to thoroughly investigate all relevant issues—and to make them public—before restart can occur. The Boxer/Markey inquiry has included some heated dialogue with regulatory staff. It's raised critical questions about whether Edison knew it was installing faulty equipment in the first place, a potentially explosive revelation given the dangers and costs involved.

* Newly revealed correspondence between Edison and Mitsubishi over additional steam generator issues reveal persistent unresolved disagreements about the technology involved and what needs to be done about it, casting further doubt on what might constitute safe operating procedures.

* In response to a suit by Friends of the Earth (FOE), the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has ruled that Edison's restart application in fact constitutes a license amendment, which should require a full public hearing. The NRC could overrule its licensing board. But this was a unanimous decision and the public and congressional outcry would be substantial. It's a huge setback for Edison, damaging what's left of its credibility and likely pushing the restart far into the future. There's also much Edison is likely to want hidden from the public record.

* NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane now says San Onofre cannot be licensed to restart at least until late June, which probably pushes any actual restart date until after the summer.

* So this could become the region's second straight peak season with no power from San Onofre. Despite utility rhetoric, its absence last summer caused no blackouts or significant shortages, and none are expected this summer either. Edison's argument that the reactors are needed to keep the region cool and lit will thus disappear.

* Edison CEO Theodore Craver now says San Onofre could be permanently shut before the end of the year. "Edison is hemorrhaging cash at San Onofre," says FOE's Damon Moglen. Craver is "a financial guy" who is now just "looking for the right numbers to get to shut-down."

It's common in the nuke blackmail business for a utility to threaten to shut a reactor where jobs and power are desperately needed. But Edison now has a more desperate theme. The spread of solar throughout southern California will bring far more jobs than San Onofre can begin to promise. A new feed-in tariff in Los Angeles has helped spread solar panels throughout the region.

Edison billed southern California ratepayers roughly $1 billion for San Onofre in 2012 even though it generated no juice. The CPUC would probably let them do it again, but public awareness and anger levels have soared. Major media throughout the region have been pummeling Edison, largely over economic issues.

Should San Onofre stay dead, its power void will fast be filled by cheaper, cleaner, safer green technologies destined to make southern California a major focal point in the global march to Solartopia.

This shutdown would take the number of licensed U.S. reactors down to 100. With others on the brink at Indian Point, Vermont Yankee, Oyster Creek and elsewhere, the race to shut the world's nukes before the next Fukushima is turning the so-called nuclear renaissance into an all-out reactor retreat.

 

Harvey Wasserman writes regularly for a wide internet readership through solartopia.org, freepress.org and nukefree.org, which he edits. His current radio show, "the Solartopia Green Power Hour," runs at www.TalktainmentRadio.com.

Republished from EcoWatch.com
Visit EcoWatch's ENERGY and NUCLEAR pages
for more related news on this topic.

Japan Counters America's Asia Pivot with North Korea Ellipse

Japan tips its hand via North Korea

by Peter Lee - Asia Times Online

The big story in Asia affairs today is a little trip that was supposed to stay a secret: the dispatch of Isao Iijima, adviser to Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, to meet with senior officials in North Korea, thereby breaking the united US/South Korean/Japanese front in negotiations with Pyongyang.

It is the first instance of an overt divergence between Japanese and US diplomatic and security strategies, something that has been implicit in Japan's sometimes-inflammatory brand of nationalism under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe - and Abe's determination to move Japan beyond its traditional role of obedient.

US ally to independent regional force

The United States has been quietly disapproving of Japan's China strategy - witness Kurt Campbell's statement that the US advised Japan against nationalizing the Senkaku islands - and provocative nationalist hi-jinks on issues like the Yasukuni Shrine, but excused them as politically motivated exercises in domestic base-pandering.

However, the North Korean trip has revealed the cloven hoof beneath the robe, as far as Japan's independent aspirations in Asia are concerned.

Japan Times made it clear that the US was not consulted in advance about the trip; US special representative for North Korea Glyn Davies was only briefed after the visit:

Japan briefed the United States on Thursday about the surprise visit to North Korea by an adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

After meeting with his Japanese counterpart in Tokyo, Glyn Davies, US. special representative for North Korea policy, said he hopes to gain more "insights" into Isao Iijima's unannounced trip in the coming days. ...

The trip, apparently an effort to resolve the issue over North Korea's abductions of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s, has raised concerns that Japan could be seen as acting alone, while the United States and South Korea continue to pressure Pyongyang over its nuclear arms and missile threats.

"I have begun the process of learning a bit more about [Iijima's trip]," Davies told reporters after meeting with Shinsuke Sugiyama, director general of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau.

"I think we have some days to wait for all of us before we know there are any results from this mission ... we obviously will look forward to hearing from the government of Japan more details about this in [the] coming days," he said.

While South Korea has criticized the Japanese move as "not helpful," given the importance of coordinating a united front by Washington, Seoul and Tokyo against Pyongyang, Davies said, "I'm not going to address it in that way." [1] 

The Christian Science Monitor calls it from the US side: "Japan's 'secret' trip to North Korea disrupts united stance against Pyongyang." [2] South Korea was less circumspect:

Seoul criticized Tokyo Thursday for dispatching an envoy to North Korea voicing concerns that the visit could undermine efforts to forge a coordinated approach toward Pyongyang.

Without prior notice to South Korea, Isao Iijima, an adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, arrived in Pyongyang spawning speculation that Japan might be trying to mend broken fences with the North, while South Korea, the US, recently even China, are making efforts to punish North Korea for conducting its third nuclear test in February by imposing sanctions.

"It is important to maintain close coordination, among South Korea, the US and Japan, toward North Korea," said [South Korean] Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Tai-young in a media briefing. "In that sense, we think that the visit by Iijima to North Korea is unhelpful." [3] 

According to Japanese sources, public revelation of the trip was something of a diplomatic fiasco maliciously inflicted by North Korea:

Japan speechless on PR chief's 'secret' N.K. trip

Blown mission reveals bid to sidestep trilateral denuclearization strategy for abduction issue.

The government is keeping mum on a secret visit to North Korea by one of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's advisers after Pyongyang revealed it to the United States and South Korea.

We "can't reasonably explain" the visit because it was supposed to be kept secret, a government source said. ...

Only a handful of people, including Abe, Suga and Keiji Furuya, the minister in charge of the abduction issue, were involved in setting up the visit, they said.

A government source said there was no choice but to say: "I'm sorry, but I haven't been told about it at all," when a US official asked about Iijima's mission. [4] 

It should be pointed out that secret trips to North Korea - in addition to outreach to North Korea's UN Mission in New York - are a common feature of US diplomacy.

Quite possibly, Abe believed his North Korean move would be granted equivalent secrecy by Pyongyang and Japanese diplomats could brief US diplomats with quiet pride after the fact concerning Japan's adept, confident exercise in unilateral diplomacy. If so, the media carnival unveiled by Pyongyang on the occasion of Iijima's visit revealed Abe to be rather naive, as North Korea leapt at the chance to highlight disarray in the anti-DPRK alliance.

Abe's decision to stir the North Korean pot has several elements.

The first is the desire for domestic political advantage. A breakthrough on the issue of the remaining Japanese abductees would be a feather in Abe's cap and help secure the electoral tidal wave in the July upper house elections needed to secure a two-thirds majority - and constitution revision clout - for the Liberal Democratic Party.

Second is a genuine and understandable awareness that Japan's foreign policy needs, both on North Korea in particular and Asia/China in general, have often played second fiddle to whatever grand strategy the United States is pursuing.

The "Nixon shock" of US outreach to China in 1972 is still remembered, especially among Japanese conservatives who remember it as a betrayal of the anti-communist ethos that was supposed to permeate US diplomacy. In 2007, Japan was humiliated when the US State Department undertook to resume discussions with North Korea following its first nuclear test, without even bothering to obtain North Korean lip service on the hot-button issue of the abductees.

So there is a definite sense that Japan has to look out for and advance its own priorities; for conservatives, that translates into a willingness to pursue an independent foreign policy while shrinking from overt conflict with US priorities (though Iijima's North Korean trip indicates that Japanese deference to US policy and face may be increasingly "honored in the breach" as it were).

Third and, perhaps, less appreciated, is Japan's desire to leverage its independent foreign policy into a decisive role in Asian diplomacy. Japanese unilateralism - and the demonstrated threat of Japanese unilateralism and even brinksmanship - ensures that the US has to grant Japan a de facto veto over US policies such as rapprochement with China and negotiations with North Korea in order to keep the increasingly assertive and independent Japanese government on board.

Fourth, Japan's conservatives apparently possess an atavistic desire to confound and humiliate South Korea for its pretensions to regional economic and diplomatic leadership.

As the celebratory circle jerk of stock market punters over the soaring Nikkei continues, it should be noted that for the first time since 1998 the growth rate of yen-weakened Japan will exceed that of South Korea.

Currently, South Korea has stated a noble commitment to addressing its economic difficulties through stimulation of domestic demand, thereby letting Japan reap the unilateral benefits of a weak-yen policy. However, as South Korean corporate profits erode - and if South Korea's financial markets are roiled by hot money released by Japanese quantitative easing - it is an open question as to how long South Korea will take a generous view of Japan's lunch-eating/middle-finger flourishing attitude toward its neighbor.

There are already rumblings that South Korea is facing a Japan-style aging/stagnation crisis that Keynesian pump-priming is ill-equipped to address. If so, domestic pressure will grow for the Korean government to take Japan-style countermeasures and export its own miseries-presumably to China - with quantitative easing and a weakening of the won.

Then it will be up to China to hold the line and decide if its growth prospects are strong enough to meet the challenge with greater productivity and efficiency - or take the easy route of devaluing the yuan (employing the universally sanctioned fig leaf of "quantitative easing") and drive the Asian economy into a ditch.

In an article excoriating Japan's approach to North Korea, Korea Times' Kim Tae-gyu detoured into trade and economic grievances:

Beggar-thy-neighbor policy

Abe's flagship economic policy of depreciating the country's currency to boost the price competitiveness of made-in-Japan products is also under criticism as it tries to galvanize its economy at the expenses of its neighbors.

Critics say the Abe administration's large-scale monetary easing and the resultant fast devaluation of the yen are tantamount to economic aggression toward Asian nations.

The weakening of currency of the world's No 3 economy spills over to its rivals in international markets such as Korea and China whose exporters are now panicking - it is the very essence of a "beggar-thy-neighbor" policy.

The yen was traded near a historical high of 78 yen to the dollar last year but it now fluctuates in the vicinity of 100. Many global agencies expect that the depreciation is only halfway done as it is likely to further rise to around 120 yen by the end of next year.

The weakening yen has breathed fresh life into its moribund economy, which experienced a two-decade slump. By contrast, Korean and Chinese exporters that compete with Japanese ones are complaining about their substantially reduced bottom lines. [5]

From the US point of view, South Korea and China lining up to protect their interests against predatory Japanese trade policy - on top of Japan alienating South Korea with its go-it-alone North Korea initiative - is not what the US pivot/rebalancing to Asia is supposed to be all about.

Notes:
1. U.S. briefed on Abe aide Iijima's surprise Pyongyang visit, Japan Times, May 17, 2013.
2. Japan's 'secret' trip to North Korea disrupts united stance against Pyongyang, May 17, 2013.
3. Seoul slams Japan for sending envoy to NK, Korea Times, May 16, 2013.
4. Japan speechless on PR chief's 'secret' N.K. trip, Japan Times, May 19, 2013.
5. Abe taking Japan back to imperial past, Korea Times, May 15, 2013.

Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US foreign policy.

(Copyright 2013 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Keeping Score in Syria

Syria Peace Process Scorecard 

by Peter Lee - China Matters

As Attentive Reader knows, I’ve been pushing a couple ideas about the diverging aims of the US, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar ever since the reboot of the overseas Syrian opposition at Doha in November 2012.

First, the logical endgame for the increasingly radicalized and bloody Syrian insurrection is not victory; it is a clubbing together of moderate, conservative, and authoritarian forces to suppress the jihadis, as occurred during the “Anbar Awakening” (or less politely, “death squads a go go” or “liquidation of AQ-aligned forces by an opportunistic alliance of local Sunni elites and US special forces”) in Iraq.

Case proven on this point.

The United States is way past hiding its anxiety about extremists in Syria. According to UAE’s The National, it wants to kill them even before scores are settled with Bashar al Assad:

Then, by the rebel commander's account, the discussion took an unexpected turn.

The Americans began discussing the possibility of drone strikes on Al Nusra camps inside Syria and tried to enlist the rebels to fight their fellow insurgents.

"The US intelligence officer said, 'We can train 30 of your fighters a month, and we want you to fight Al Nusra'," the rebel commander recalled.

Opposition forces should be uniting against Mr Al Assad's more powerful and better-equipped army, not waging war among themselves, the rebel commander replied. The response from a senior US intelligence officer was blunt.

"I'm not going to lie to you. We'd prefer you fight Al Nusra now, and then fight Assad's army. You should kill these Nusra people. We'll do it if you don't," the rebel leader quoted the officer as saying.

Second point was that the Gulf states are split between Qatar’s desire to shoehorn its Muslim Brotherhood proxies into a transitional Syrian government, and Saudi Arabia’s willingness to let ‘er rip: support the jihadis in their single-minded determination to crater the Syrian government and, perhaps, expand the chaos to bring down the Iraq-aligned Shi’a central government in Iraq.

Case definitely proven on the Qatar/Saudi split.

The Financial Times revealed that Qatar has already spent $3 billion on its Syrian adventure and has, in the process, aroused Saudi resentment and anxiety, provoking the Kingdom to “nudge Qatar aside” as the leading provider of arms to the rebels.

But case unproven on the matter of unequivocal Saudi support for the jihadis and an insurrection-driven endgame in Syria.

Saudi Arabia, fearful of blowback, is actively discouraging Saudi volunteers from fighting in Syria (and is attempting to deprogram Saudi AQ members under luxurious, spa-like conditions at the “Prince Mohammed bin Nayef Centre for Counselling and Care”); whether this reflects utter abhorrence of the Syrian jihadis' leadership, personnel, and Caliphitic agenda is unknown.

Maybe Saudi Arabia regards a Syrian anti-Assad jihad cleansed of young Saudi enthusiasts the same way Pakistan’s ISS regards the Afghan Taliban: unruly but supremely useful and murderous proxies.

The FT version is that Saudi Arabia is asserting itself as the opposition’s armorer because Qatar was indiscriminately showering arms on radicals like Jabhat al-Nusra, which recently declared allegiance to Al Qaeda.

The military reverses recently suffered by the insurrectionists after two years of battling Assad’s weary forces probably reflect a reduction in foreign aid and fighters under US pressure.

Which means that Salafi-friendly governments have presumably heeded US calls to withhold resources from the most effective but least-West friendly jihadi elements inside Syria.

I leave it to the experts to determine if Saudi Arabia’s actions are driven by constitutional distaste for Jabhat al-Nusra (and its ties with the constitutionally Saudi-hostile al Qaeda leadership), or represent an attempt to wrongfoot local rival Qatar and gain a measure of useful leverage over Syria’s most potent insurrectionist force.

Anyway, after two years of bloody and counterproductive cheerleading for the insurrection, the United States has belatedly clubbed with Russia to support some kind of peace process.

The idea is to short-circuit the armed insurrection, start some political jaw-jaw, thereby sidelining the jihadists and bring Syria’s reformist, liberal opposition back into the game.

My feeling is that from the US side, this initiative is…Dishonest? Disingenuous? Dissembling?

Choose your dis word.

After two years of bloodshed, I don’t think there is a lot of meaningful domestic reformist opposition to reboot. The reformist expectation that popular demonstrations would elicit government repression, thereby accelerating popular alienation from the regime and hastening its non-violent fall at the hands of overwhelming secular and moderate forces, pretty much backfired.

Instead, distaste for Assad has been matched and perhaps exceeded by dismay at the influx of jihadis and the shredding of Syria’s economic and social fabric while the forces of neo-liberalism cheered blindly from the sidelines (and the Guardian dug its journalistic grave with its ghastly anti-regime agitprop).


Syrian domestic disgust with the revolution is pretty widespread, and the pathetic overseas opposition has done nothing to establish itself as a viable political force. A true peace process would probably find it necessary to preserve a central role for key elements of the current regime in a new government.

But I don’t think that’s the ultimate purpose of the peace process.

If and when West-sponsored civilian forces manage to put on a suitable reformist show (including a display of anti-jihadi as well as anti-Assad revulsion), the United States will have sufficient moral and political cover to seize upon some real or manufactured Assad outrage, condemn Assad and his cronies as insincere and inadequate peace partners, declare that the immiserated Syrians are incapable of defending themselves against the depredations of the regime, and cobble together some kind of intervention to topple Assad that denies a leading and decisive role to the jihadis.

In other words, Qaddafi redux, this time with a brisk stab in the back for Assad after a few weeks of rapprochement (instead of after the expensive ten-year cozying up to the West to which Qaddafi subjected himself). I think Assad himself is well aware of this possibility.

I would speculate that this is the kind of too-clever-by-half ostentatiously moralizing approach (freedom rings! Jihad baffled! lessons of Libya ignored!) that President Obama adores, and represents the kind of action that Turkey’s PM Erdogan—who has ingloriously hoisted himself on his anti-Assad petard—is begging the West to implement with Ankara’s support.

And maybe the Salafist extremists will resist the urge to sabotage a peace process transparently targeting them and, at the urging of their Gulf paymaster,s accept a brief hiatus in their anti-Iran/anti-Shi’a crusade in order to appease the United States. With the anti-Shi’a insurrection in Iraq burgeoning and Syria in ruins, maybe they feel they can stand down for the time being and re-seize the initiative at their leisure.

Or else…

We’ll see what new kinds of war the peace process brings.

Fat Bastard and the Eurasia Media Forum Oilgarchs

I Upset My Least Favourite Big Fat Greek Minister

by Greg Palast - Vice Magazine

It wasn't too difficult picking out the Fat Bastard in the crowd of Russian models, craven moochers and media mavens. Besides, Fat Bastard and I were both desperate for coffee and heading for the same empty urn.

(We’d both signed on for Kazakhstan’s annual Eurasia Media Forum, a kind of Burning Man festival for Eastern oilgarchs and their media camp followers.)

Now, it is my policy never to mention an interlocutor’s weight, nor question the legitimacy of their birth, given my own vulnerabilities. (A would-be groupie told me, "You could do a few sit-ups, you know." Yes, I know.)

But this particular Fat Bastard is asking for it. I had tried to put the belly of this beast out of my thoughts, but I still had a New York Times story folded in my pocket that begins:

ATHENS – As an elementary school principal, Leonidas Nikas is used to seeing children play, laugh and dream about the future. But recently he has seen something altogether different, something he thought was impossible in Greece: children picking through school trash cans for food; needy youngsters asking playmates for leftovers; and an 11-year-old boy, Pantelis Petrakis, bent over with hunger pains.

Fat Bastard – or Theodoros Pangalos, leader of the Panhellenic Socialist Party (PASOK), Greece's equivalent to Labour – thinks the little Greek kiddies should stop belly-aching. Pangalos, as you can see from the photo below, is not bent over with hunger pains. In fact, he looks more likely to be bent over with labour pains, but in truth he probably just can’t bend over at all.

Pangalos is best known for blaming the working people of Greece for the horror and the hunger among the ruins of what was once Greece’s economy. However, it is, of course, not his fault; until last year, and through the core of the crisis, he was just Greece’s Deputy Prime Minister – why should he be held accountable for anything?


Pangalos reclining.

Minister Pangalos is much loved by Europe’s banking chieftains, by vulture speculators and by Prussian President Angela Merkel because they’ve got themselves a gigantic Greek who will mouth their mantra: that his nation’s sudden collapse can be blamed squarely on olive-pit-spitting, lazy-ass Greeks who won’t work more than three hours a week, then retire while they’re still teenagers to swill state-subsidised ouzo.

Pangalos leads the Fifth Column of Greeks calling to accept Germany’s terms of economic surrender: austerity, meaning cuts in food allowances, in pensions, in jobs. As of this week, more than one in four Greeks (27 percent) are out of work.

While we hunted for caffeine, Fat Bastard told me that anyone who complains about the austerity diktat, “Is a fascist or a communist or a conspiracy theorist.” He didn’t tell me which of these three categories the 11-year-old kids complaining of hunger pains fell into.

Just for the record, Greeks who can get a job work 619 more hours per year (see table) than the average German (and way, way more than Britons or Americans, as well).

But in the world according to Pangalos, Merkel and poobahs of the media, Greece went to hell in a handbag because the entire nation suddenly turned into work-shirking grifters.

But there’s another explanation for wrack and ruin: Greece is a crime scene. And its working people are not the perpetrators of the crime, they are the victims – scammed, defrauded, their national industries looted and their treasury drained by financial flim-flam.

In 2001, Greece dropped the drachma for the euro. The drachma was good enough for Aristotle and very good for tourism, Greece’s main industry. But when sun-and-fun was re-priced in euros, tourists swam across the Adriatic for kofte meatballs priced in dirt-cheap Turkish lira. Pre-euro tourist visits to Greece outnumbered those to Turkey by millions; but by last year, it was the just the opposite, with two-thirds of tourists tanning in Turkey.

With its Treasury bleeding hard currency, the government of Minister Pangalos’s PASOK joined together with the opposition in a complex international currency kiting operation to conceal the losses from the public and, most importantly, from the European Central Bank.

Why the cover-up of the deficit? The answer is that the euro is more than a currency: it is a straitjacket, a set of constricting rules that, for example, prohibit any euro nation from running a deficit of more than 3 percent of GDP.

That’s impossible in a recession – not to mention plain insane – as it requires cutting public spending when spending is needed most. The USA, China, Brazil, India – the nations that pulled the world from depression’s brink – all ran deficits way over the nutty 3 percent cap. I asked finance wiz Nomi Prins to calculate America’s debt-to-GDP ratio using euro rules, and she estimates that Obama’s deficits are now way down from recession’s peak – to 10.2 percent of GDP.

Greece, fearing expulsion from the euro loony bin, turned to Goldman Sachs. For a mere $400 million (£263 million) in fees, plus golden sacks of ill-gotten trading gain, the investment was willing to cook the nation’s books via a complex set of derivatives transactions. [For the particulars of the derivatives con, see "How Goldman Sacked Greece".]

Since the con was busted open in 2009, the Greek public has had to pay cheated bondholders a premium to insure against default of the nation’s debts. The credit default insurance costs an average of $14,000 (£9,218) per family per year.

When I was a racketeering investigator working with the US Justice Department, in the days when we pretended America still had justice, we would have called the derivatives trick a “fraud on the market”. We’d handcuff the perpetrators, lock ’em up, or, at the least, make them cough up their purloined profits.

So, should Goldman pay up? Not according to Pangalos, because – in the worldview of our rulers – the victims of the scam are as guilty as the victimisers. Pangalos even put it into a famous (or infamous) motto: mazi-ta-fagame. That’s Greek for “We all ate it together” (a sample of which was used in a Plastic Flowers song).

But the visible evidence suggests Pangalos, not Pantelis – the kid doubled over with stomach pain – ate all the pies.

The mass privatisation of public property at wiener schnitzel prices has German speculators dipping in their spoons as well, though the Federation of German industry is complaining about Greece’s own “princes” gobbling up the assets.

I was going to invite Minister Pangalos to lunch to test his theories, but he left in a pachydermic huff when I asked him about Geir Haarde. Haarde, the former Prime Minister of Iceland, was found guilty of criminally concealing his knowledge of the trickery used by Iceland’s banks before they melted that nation’s finances.

I asked Fat Bastard, “Do you think you too should be in prison for similar conduct in the Greek government?”

Maybe that’s why Minister Pangalos didn't want to go to lunch with me.

Greg Palast is a New York Times bestselling author and fearless investigative journalist whose reports appear on BBC Newsnight and in The Guardian. Palast eats the rich and spits them out. Catch his reports and films at www.GregPalast.com, where you can also securely send him your documents marked, "confidential".

Greg Palast’s book Vultures’ Picnic, including chapters on Greece and Goldman, will be published in Greek in early autumn by Livani. Download the first chapter, Goldfinger, and videos at www.VulturesPicnic.org.

Follow Greg on Twitter: @Greg_Palast

Previously - A Novel Idea: Asking an Afghan About the Future of Afghanistan

First two images courtesy of Anthony DiMieri/Palast Investigative Fund.

The Corporation is a Person (and a Traitor)

The Age of Corporate Treason

by Ralph Nader - CounterPunch

Why are big, global U.S. corporations so unpatriotic? After all, they were created in the U.S.A., rose to immense profit because of the toil of American workers, are bailed out by American taxpayers whenever they’re in trouble, and are safeguarded abroad by the U.S. military.

Yet these corporate goliaths work their tax lawyers overtime to escape U.S. taxes. Many pay less than you do in federal income taxes. Imagine corporations, like General Electric, have not paid federal income taxes on U.S. profits for years.

Mega corporations have abandoned U.S. workers by entrenching “pull-down” trade agreements that make it easier than ever to ship jobs and whole industries to fascist and communist regimes abroad which keep their workers near serfdom. Remember, the U.S. has run large trade deficits for the past 30 years as a result of anti-American trade deals pushed by these global companies. These goliaths are pressing for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that will further pull down our economy. (See http://www.citizen.org/page.aspx?pid=1328.)

Corporate CEOs are raiding and draining traditional pension plans for millions of workers who are left without their expected and earned pension payments on retirement. (For more information see Ellen E. Schultz’s book Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers.)

They are freezing the federal minimum wage, for low income service jobs that they cannot export, at $7.25 per hour, leaving thirty million workers today making less than workers made in 1968, inflation adjusted. Having wages that go backwards into the future means workers cannot afford the basic necessities of life for themselves and their children.

Giant companies hire legions of lobbyists to weaken or abolish consumer, worker and environmental safety and health laws, to stop our country from joining all other Western Nations with full Medicare for all. Corporate campaign cash increasingly flows to indentured politicians, who in turn do the bidding of the corporate paymasters at your expense.

We’ve yet to find a CEO of a U.S. global corporation who will even go through the motions at their annual shareholders meeting standing up and, in the name of the company, pledging “allegiance to the United States…with liberty and justice for all.” When asked, as was General Motors, the CEO refused.

Charge companies with unpatriotic behavior and you’ll tap a nerve or two. The munitions companies, like Lockheed Martin and Boeing, put ads on television and radio asserting how their modern weapons back up our troops who are sent to expand the Empire. Of course, defense contractors never mention their huge profits, cost over-runs and their staffing the higher echelons of the Pentagon with their own appointees. Nor do these arms merchants ever raise a patriotic objection to the criminal wars of aggression conducted by Bush/Cheney against the defenseless people of Iraq, whose tottering dictator, formerly a U.S. ally, was not a threat to America.

Other companies are trying softer promotions of their claimed care for America. Have you seen the lengthy ad campaign by Chevron that starts with some bold demand by a pictured ordinary person? One such ad begins “Oil companies SHOULD support the communities they’re a PART OF” (Chevron’s emphasis) and, invariably, Chevron answers “we agree,” and lists their charities here and abroad. Evaluating corporation philanthropy is for another time; suffice it to say that not one giant corporation exceeds one percent of their pre-tax profits, when the law allows them to give up to five percent, deductible.

Do you think that all of the above only comes from consumer/worker advocates? Then read a new, paperback book by Robert A.G. Monks, titled Citizens Disunited: the Corporate Capture of the American Dream.

Monks, a former corporate lawyer, corporate CEO, founder of companies, bank chairman, and investor-advocate extraordinaire, writes memorably about corporate excesses.

He quotes an Apple executive who told The New York Times: “We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries. We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems.” Monks responds: “This is what greed looks like in the global epoch of corporatism: plunder the Treasury, to be sure, but then deny all sense of responsibility to your country of domicile, outsource all obligations, and, like maggots, set to work destroying the host from inside by exporting its jobs and depleting its revenue sources.”

He then cites Clyde Prestowitz, founder of the Economic Strategy Institute, who wrote that, as a top U.S. government trade negotiator, he went to great lengths to open up the Japanese market for Apple in the early nineteen eighties, adding: “We did all we could and in doing so came to learn that virtually everything Apple had for sale, from the memory chips to the cute pointer mouse, had had its origins in some program wholly or partially supported by U.S. government money.”

Monks sums up: “Henry Ford’s great success was built in part on his decision to pay his workers a high enough wage so that they could afford the products they were producing. No more. The shrinking middle class, the widening gap between the rich and the poor – these are some of those American ‘problems’ that American-born-and-bred corporations like Apple really have no time for.” For more galvanized specifics, please read and absorb this book!

Other high, former corporate officials are speaking out. Former general counsel of USAir, Lawrence Stentzel, called on reluctant federal prosecutors to hold corporate wrongdoers’ feet to the fire and force them to admit to their wrongdoing. He also demanded that the Justice Department create a user friendly database of corporate wrong doing. (See corporatecrimereporter.com.)

Big U.S. corporations have long demanded a legal system where they are defined as “people,” so as to get all of our constitutional rights while they expand their privileged powers and immunities. Well, why don’t we measure them by the many patriotic standards that we apply to ourselves, the real American people.

Getting these giant firms on the defensive is the first step for the resurgence of the people so that corporations become our servants and do not remain our masters.


Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition.