IN A TIME OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT...TELLING THE TRUTH BECOMES A REVOLUTIONARY ACT "Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wicked of men will do the most wicked of things for the greatest good of everyone." John Maynard Keynes
" Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration" Abraham Lincoln
This is the summit of Konoya Point, which is right behind the Chugach Front Research Centre, visible as we type. One of our favourite things to do in winter here is hike up these adjacent heights after a windstorm, when the snow is packed down hard. So that we can ascend in Katoolahs, which are shoe chains that are very strong and durable. Allowing us to scale and descend steep snowy and icy sections safely. This ridge is Konoya Point, it rises to 1433 metres (4700 ft) right behind our neighbourhood, which is at only 80 metres (262 ft). Behind it, several other peaks rise to a maximum of 1628 metres (5340 ft) within easy day-hiking ability. We haven't quite made it to those others yet though, but we look forward to it. At these elevations, above 1000 metres, the weather conditions can change rapidly, and become quite arduous, with gale or storm force winds, fog/whiteout visibilities, and even near freezing in summer. So we have to choose good weather days. We did this one the last week in February, when it still windy, but not full storm force. The driest months in Alaska are generally, February, March, and April, which occur because less moisture is available from the Bering Sea, which is two-thirds frozen then. So weather systems with trajectories from the WSW to NW are drier, and weaker. It's no surprise then, that these are our favourite months here in Alaska. Peak snowpack, longer, warmer days, and abundant sunshine make for a winter paradise.
Wednesday last your lead editor got to go on a back-country ski tour on the Arctic to Indian route. 34 KM from around 1000 metres at the head of the Ship Creek drainage, the trail drops from the road down to Ship Creek at 427 metres. Then follows it up 21 KM to Indian pass, around 950 metres, descending in 10 km to the trailhead at 150 metres, in the valley and hamlet of Indian. Nestled in the much warmer, wetter, maritime climate, around the corner from Anchorage's interior blend, which is more to our liking. Mattie and Homer had to stay home, because my friend Tim Stallard, from Fairbanks, and five of his Anchorage friends and I, all had to car shuttle when we were done, in Indian, in a VW van.
The first two miles are a fairly steep and narrow downhill to Ship Creek. I had to take my skis off and walk most of this. The trail was less than a metre wide in many sections, and very hard, from being scraped. My newly glide-waxed metal-edged touring skis were just too fast and unstable on this, I kept getting out of control.
Once we got down to Ship Creek, on the valley bottom, the trail followed it, smooth and fairly level, for 15-18KM. We made really good time here, and enjoyed the views of the higher peaks on both sides. Interesting to know that there is a big city on the other side of them, you sure wouldn't know that here.
One of Tim's friends did bring 13 year old lab-husky mix Sky. She has Homer's white/blue eyes, with the same black coat. Very striking, and with his wolfy long legs too. She really enjoyed herself on this trip.
Getting further south toward Indian Pass, in the afternoon, the surrounding peaks on both sides became closer, as the valley narrowed. These are around 1650 metres (5400 feet).
Only these stunted mountain hemlock and spruce trees can make a go of it in this windswept, cold area at 950 metres. Even in summer, at these elevations it can drop to 3-6C (34-42F) for days at a time, with strong winds and rain. When a cold airmass in the interior settles in, cold north winds howl through here at gale and storm force (60-120 KPH).
We reached the around 950 metres (3100 ft.) Indian Pass around 230 pm, after starting out at 0945, and had lunch here. We could see down the Indian Valley toward Cook Inlet now, and the moister, maritime forest of hemlocks. More snow now too, about three times deeper than just a few KM back.
I had to take my skis off here and start walking though, as it was quite steep down the pass. I just couldn't stay in control, like the others, on their wider, heavier, shaped, back-country skis. Thus began my "miserable mile" of post-holing, falling into the snow up to my hips and belly frequently, and having to dig out, on the way down. Because it was a steep wider slope, it wasn't packed down hard. I was getting blown-out having to get through that. Sure loved those views though, down to ice-clogged Turnagain Arm. The daily tides are among the highest in the World here, 13 metres (40 feet!) in places. So Cook Inlet, Turnagain Arm, and Knik Arm, never fully freeze over. Just get filled with icy chunks, some of which are huge.
Once I got a little lower though, the trail narrowed, and became more hard-packed. Then, for the last 9 KM, I enjoyed a nice walk through the woods in the bright March sun. The trail was really narrow and still steep here, so no skiing. In some areas, it was full of debris, it'd been almost a month since the last snow, and that was taking it's toll. So it was better to walk on that anyway, my skis wouldn't get scratched and gouged.
Waiting for us at the end, was this 1987 VW Synchromesh 4WD van. We all fit in, but barely, with seven people, a large dog (Sky slept on my knee on the way back), and all our skis and gear. Sure was a beautiful day in the March sun, about -7C (23F) at the start, and +2C (35F) at the end, with just light south winds. Good company, and a nice route. We love March.
I felt bad leaving Homer and Mattie back at the Chugach Front Research Centre, while on this beautiful outing. So the last five days running, we've all been on skis and runs, in the invigourating March sun. Today, they were both a little slower, it's warming up to +2C now in the afternoon, and since they both have their winter coats on, they can overheat quickly.
We sometimes wish it was forever February, and March!
I know alot of you are wondering, and are probably apprehensive about what is happening in Japan, with their serious nuclear power station fires/explosions, and radioactive material releases, after their tragic earthquake/tsunami last week. We feel great sorrow for the people of that area of Japan, the northern section of the island of Honshu. Many of whom are still cold and starving, after having lost everything, family and friends, their livelihoods and homes. Now they are having to deal with the terrible threat of losing even the land they can live in, from radioactive contamination, and exposure to it, that would greatly increase cancer rates there, over the coming decades. We'll do our best to provide you with the most up-to-date and scientifically assessed potential threats of contamination reaching Alaska and the western U.S./Canada, over the coming weeks. Alot depends on the dangerous situation at the Fukushima reactor complex, which is still evolving, and which may take weeks before the real threats can be assessed and described.
We are strongly against nuclear power at the A.P.R., now of course, more than ever, and we must all work to see that not just our government, in the U.S., but all those around the World, finally and fully cease using this incredibly dangerous and unsafe technology, just to boil water. To generate steam pressure, which drives turbines, generating electricity.
When talking about the dangers of nuclear power though, we think it's important to realise, it has been built upon decades of bad practices, from outright lies and corruption, from corporations seeking government funding and support for their products. To environmental poisoning and destruction in every stage of the process from mining the raw Uranium ore, to refining it and extracting the isotope Uranium-235, which is the isotope that undergoes "fission", releasing the energy that can either be used in nuclear weaponry, or, if controlled, generate power (naturally occurring Uranium, mined from the Earth, is almost all U-238, a more stable isotope that doesn't naturally split as easily/frequently as U-235, which occurs in an exceedingly small fraction of the raw ore, which requires incredibly complex refining to extract). And through the waste cycle, where the highly dangerous and unstable used nuclear fuel must be continually cooled, and monitored, to prevent it overheating, which could generate a chemical explosion, powerful enough to spew radioactive isotopes that are dangerous for decades, to centuries, over a large area.
We came across this article the other day, in our general research, about the growing nuclear crisis in Japan, and thought it worthy of sharing and commentary. Because it illustrates several unfortunate themes:
- the tragic mistreatment of Indigenous peoples on this continent, which continues to this day
- how irresponsible and destructive to people and the environment unregulated and uncontrolled
capitalism was, and continues to be, in fact, more than ever
- how dirty and dangerous just the first cycle in the nuclear energy process is, that of mining the
There’s an old uranium mine on rancher Larry Gordy’s grazing land near Cameron, Arizona. Like hundreds of other abandoned mines in the Navajo Nation, the United States’ largest Indian reservation, it looks as if it might still be in use—tailings, or waste products of uranium processing, are still piled everywhere, and the land isn’t fenced off.“It looks like Mars,” said Marsha Monestersky, program director of Forgotten People, an advocacy organization for the western region of the vast Navajo Nation, which covers 27,000 square miles in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently embroiled in a massive effort to assess 520 open abandoned uranium mines all over the vast reservation. (Forgotten People says there are even more mines on Navajo land: about 1,300.) Earlier this month, the cleanup got a boost from a bankruptcy settlement with Oklahoma City-based chemical company Tronox Inc., which will give federal and Navajo Nation officials $14.5 million to address the reservation’s uranium contamination.
During the Cold War, private companies like Tronox’s parent company, Kerr-McGee Corp., operated uranium mines under U.S. government contracts, removing four million tons of ore that went into making nuclear weapons and fuel. When demand dried up with the end of the era, companies simply abandoned their mines as they were.
The remediation work started ten years ago, when the EPA mapped the mines by investigating company records and surveying the land with helicopters equipped with radiation detectors. They are now halfway through visiting mines to determine their radiation levels. “It’s an overwhelming problem,” said Clancy Tenley, EPA assistant director for the region.
The mines expose Navajo Nation residents to uranium through airborne dust and contaminated drinking water. Many residents’ homes were built using mud and rocks near mines, and some of that building material is radioactive. There are few published studies on the effects of uranium mines on nearby residents, but researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of New Mexico are working on health assessments, according to EPA officials. Researchers have known for decades that uranium exposure increases the risk of lung and bone cancers and kidney damage.
In July, the leaders of Forgotten People began pushing the EPA to begin cleanup in Cameron because they were worried about the effects of the mines there on ranchers like Gordy, whose cattle drink and graze on uranium-contaminated land. Their tussle with the agency highlights the difficulties the EPA faces in all stages of its cleanup, which will likely take decades. The uranium mine Gordy found wasn’t even included in the EPA’s original atlas. “We’re grateful to [Monestersky] for pointing that out to us,” said Tenley, the agency spokesman. He initially said the EPA would visit the site within six months but publicity over conditions there apparently prompted a change of heart.
Instead, EPA contractors assessed the site November 9. A scientist who participated wouldn’t discuss what he found without EPA officials present, and agency officials couldn’t be reached for comment. However, Lee Greer, a biologist from La Sierra University in Riverside, California, was part of a conference call about the assessment’s results. Greer has been working with Forgotten People to record radiation levels at sites that interest the advocacy group. He said the EPA contractors found radiation levels at the mine that were higher than the EPA’s Geiger counters could measure.
The accelerated assessment of Gordy’s ranch came six days after Greer presented his radiation results from the site to the Geological Society of America. A geologist who was present at the society meeting said that, based on Greer’s findings, a cleanup of the mine should be a high priority. “The sooner, the better,” said Michael Phillips, a professor at Illinois Valley Community College. Because the uranium at this mine is on the surface of the land, people and animals are more likely to come in contact with it, he added.
But the preliminary assessment of the site is just the first step on a long road to a cleanup that is years and possibly even decades away. The time lag between an assessment and a remediation job depends on what scientists find at a particular mine, said Andrew Bain, EPA remediation project manager. The U.S.’s five-year plan for the Navajo Nation’s uranium mines only covers assessment, not cleanup. The EPA started remediating the reservation’s largest mine, the Northeast Church Rock Mine in New Mexico, in 2005, and doesn’t expect to finish until 2019. “We have no estimate for how long it’ll take to clean up all the mines,” Tenley said.
As for the price tag, the recent Tronox settlement will only cover a fraction of the overall cleanup. Just assessing the uranium mines in the Navajo Nation costs the EPA about $12 million every year, said Tenley. Remediation would cost more, he added. How much more? “In the hundreds of millions,” he said.
All this means a long wait for residents like Gordy, though they’ve already waited more than twenty years since the close of the Cold War. “It’s taking forever to get it cleaned up,” said Don Yellowman, president of Forgotten People. “It seems like everyone’s aware but nobody’s taking notice. We don’t understand.”
We understand, here at the A.P.R. Corporate profits are more important than people's lives, and livelihoods, under our current government. And since the Indigenous people of this continent are the most marginalised and neglected "minority" in this country. Not only that, now the EPA is under great threat of being gutted in it's ability to operate in any real sense of "Environmental Protection" by the new Republican sociopaths in Congress. In order that corporate profits will not be affected by having to respect and protect the global environment and all the beings therein.
A Navajo woman wrote a report in 2008, published by a UN committee on climate-change related issues, which describes first-hand, even better, the terrible situation their people face, from decades of uranium mining, parts of which are here:
2007/WS.5
Original: English
UNITED NATIONS NATIONS UNIES
Co-organizers
United Nations University – Institute of Advanced Studies, Secretariat of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance (NAILSMA)
INTERNATIONAL EXPERT GROUP MEETING ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND CLIMATE CHANGE
DARWIN, AUSTRALIA
APRIL 2-4, 2008
Climate Change on the Navajo Nation Lands
Paper by
KIMBERLY SMITH
Navajo Nation
ARIZONA, USA
Introduction
The cost of the United States fossil fuel economy has always impacted the Indigenous peoples in the Americas. However, the costs have been more than monetary. Indigenous peoples have been relocated to what was seen as ‘useless pieces of land’. These lands were deemed ‘useless’ because they had poor vegetation. Now, these ‘useless pieces of land’ are rich in oil, gas, coal, uranium, and water. Indigenous lands contain 30% of all coal in the United States. The Navajo Nation has the largest coal mining operations not only in Southwest, but also in the world. Not only that, 37% of all uranium is found on Native American reservations. For twenty years, uranium was mined on the Navajo Nation. The impacts of the mining operations on Navajo territories were, and still are fatal to the health, economy, culture, of the Navajo People.
The Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934, which is also known as the Wheeler Howard Act, gave the first nations the right to govern themselves. The IRA ended all traditional tribal forms of government and put in place a ‘fill-in-the-blank government’. Most importantly, it gave the tribal landholders the right to sell their lands. Therefore, making it easy for energy corporations to come in and create mining contracts with Indigenous peoples.
Energy enthusiasts see the abundance of fossil fuels as a gift, but Indigenous peoples are faced with tainted water, diminished food resources and plants, forced removals, increased rates of health ailments, and are being held hostage economically. The Navajo Nation is one Indigenous nation that has direct dealings with energy companies. The Navajo Nation has the largest reservation in the United States. The Navajo nation is rich in livestock, song and dance, stories, ceremony, language and natural resources.
The Navajo Nation
The Navajo Nation extends from Northern Arizona into Western New Mexico, and Southeastern Utah. The Navajo land base is the size of Ireland. The Navajo are the second largest Indigenous nation in the United States. There is an energy gold mine within that 18.5 million acre land base. Navajo land is abundant in gas, coal, water, and uranium. Currently, there are 5 extractive industries on our territories. Of those, there are 3 coal-fired power plants that are polluting our lands and contributing greatly to climate change. These industries have played a remarkable role on the economy, our people, our culture, and our rights to these resources and land. Unfortunately, 48.54% of the Navajo Nation is unemployed. This creates an interesting situation for the Navajo people, because the environmental impact of these extractive resources and the need for jobs holds Indigenous peoples as economic hostages. In most cases, the tribal governments are in favor of the mining developments, creating a dilemma, dividing the people and their government.
The Navajo Nation economy includes activities such as: sheep and cattle herding, weaving, jewelry making, and art trading. The Navajo government employs hundreds in civil service and administrative jobs. There are also tribal members that set up roadside stands selling handmade crafts, especially on major highways or near major tourist attractions. The Navajo Nation's extensive mineral resources are among the most valuable held within the United States. Aside from the mining occupations, the Navajo government employs most Navajos. Other Navajo members work at retail stores and other businesses within the Nation's reservation or in nearby towns. As stated earlier, the reservation is the second largest in the nation.
Currently, our unemployment rate is 48.54% and the annual per capita income is $5,759 according to the Navajo Division of Economic Development. Newer industries that employ[ed] tribal members include coal and uranium mining. Currently, uranium mining is no longer exists on the Navajo Nation. The abundance of natural resources has eased the unemployment on the nation. In exchange, we are plagued with water depletion, drought, relocation, toxic water, a rise in cancer, and other respiratory illnesses. Climate Change has also plagues the Navajo Nation. This is a term that is not in Navajo vocabulary, but our elders have predicted a change in the environment if we were not careful. These affects are due to the uranium, gas, and coal mining on our territories...
...Uranium mining
Uranium mining on the Navajo Nation began in the 1940’s and continued for over 50 years. It has been over fifty years since uranium mining ended but the impacts are still felt today. Hundreds of abandoned mines have not been cleaned up and the land is dotted with contaminated tailings. These mines were left with no warning of the health hazards. In this area, Navajos have suffered from high cancer rates and respiratory problems.
Cancer rates among Navajo teenagers living near mine tailings are 17 times the national average. In the 1970s, Navajo uranium miners and their families began to see the effects of the mine. They asked for help to show that their lung diseases had been caused by their work in underground uranium mines in the 1940s-1960. The miners sought help from the federal government and the government compensated workers that were employed before 1971. Although the government helped the miners with their illnesses, they have yet to clean up hundreds of abandoned mines that present environmental and health risks in many Navajo communities.
In April of 2006, the Navajo Nation president approved legislation banning uranium mining on Navajo Nation land. There is no mining on the Navajo reservation, but Hydro Resources Inc. has been working with the Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission for years to try to get approval for mining near the Navajo communities of Crownpoint and Church Rock, New Mexico. The company estimates around one hundred million pounds of uranium exists in these areas making it worth millions of dollars. Hydro Resources proposes to inject chemicals down into the aquifer next to the communities’ water supply. This aquifer is the only source of drinking water for 10,000 to 15,000 people living in the Eastern Navajo Agency in New Mexico. In 1979, the largest accidental release of radioactive material in U.S. history happened in Churchrock, New Mexico. A tailing dam burst, sending eleven hundred tons of radioactive mill wastes and ninety million gallons of contaminated liquid pouring toward Arizona into the Puerco River. Today, the Navajo communities still cannot use the water.
Conclusion
Since day one, the US government continues to violate the treaties by killing the Native Americans and supporting the advancement of capitalism over the health and good of the people. In the 21st century, the US violates every international treaty by not recognizing the Navajo Nations right to self-determination and by threatening the Navajo language’s existence, by impacting the culture, territory, and the right to live in a clean healthy environment. The impact of the US fossil fuel economy has been felt by indigenous peoples and our communities but our struggles have been long and hard but we have a duty to care for Mother Earth and sustain healthy environments for the seven generations ahead. Our successes have come due to our faith in the land and from the support of many people around the world. In the end, we hope that we will inspire others to take back what is theirs, whether it is land, clean air, or the right to exist. We need to always remember to Honor The Earth.
So you can see what the Navajo people have had to deal with, from just this first stage of the nuclear energy cycle. Many articles are now coming out, documenting corruption and unsafe practices in the nuclear industry. One of our favourite comes from crack investigative reporter Greg Palast, who wrote this one:
Texas plants planned by Tokyo Electric. Image:NINA
I need to speak to you, not as a reporter, but in my former capacity as lead investigator in several government nuclear plant fraud and racketeering investigations.
I don't know the law in Japan, so I can't tell you if Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) can plead insanity to the homicides about to happen.
But what will Obama plead? The Administration, just months ago, asked Congress to provide a $4 billion loan guarantee for two new nuclear reactors to be built and operated on the Gulf Coast of Texas — by Tokyo Electric Power and local partners. As if the Gulf hasn't suffered enough.
Here are the facts about Tokyo Electric and the industry you haven't heard on CNN:
The failure of emergency systems at Japan's nuclear plants comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked in the field.
Nuclear plants the world over must be certified for what is called "SQ" or "Seismic Qualification." That is, the owners swear that all components are designed for the maximum conceivable shaking event, be it from an earthquake or an exploding Christmas card from Al Qaeda.
The most inexpensive way to meet your SQ is to lie. The industry does it all the time. The government team I worked with caught them once, in 1988, at the Shoreham plant in New York. Correcting the SQ problem at Shoreham would have cost a cool billion, so engineers were told to change the tests from 'failed' to 'passed.'
The company that put in the false safety report? Stone & Webster, now the nuclear unit of Shaw Construction which will work with Tokyo Electric to build the Texas plant, Lord help us.
There's more.
Last night I heard CNN reporters repeat the official line that the tsunami disabled the pumps needed to cool the reactors, implying that water unexpectedly got into the diesel generators that run the pumps.
These safety back-up systems are the 'EDGs' in nuke-speak: Emergency Diesel Generators. That they didn't work in an emergency is like a fire department telling us they couldn't save a building because "it was on fire."
What dim bulbs designed this system? One of the reactors dancing with death at Fukushima Station 1 was built by Toshiba. Toshiba was also an architect of the emergency diesel system.
Now be afraid. Obama's $4 billion bail-out-in-the-making is called the South Texas Project. It's been sold as a red-white-and-blue way to make power domestically with a reactor from Westinghouse, a great American brand. However, the reactor will be made substantially in Japan by the company that bought the US brand name, Westinghouse — Toshiba.
I once had a Toshiba computer. I only had to send it in once for warranty work. However, it's kind of hard to mail back a reactor with the warranty slip inside the box if the fuel rods are melted and sinking halfway to the earth's core.
TEPCO and Toshiba don't know what my son learned in 8th grade science class: tsunamis follow Pacific Rim earthquakes. So these companies are real stupid, eh? Maybe. More likely is that the diesels and related systems wouldn't have worked on a fine, dry afternoon.
Back in the day, when we checked the emergency back-up diesels in America, a mind-blowing number flunked. At the New York nuke, for example, the builders swore under oath that their three diesel engines were ready for an emergency. They'd been tested. The tests were faked, the diesels run for just a short time at low speed. When the diesels were put through a real test under emergency-like conditions, the crankshaft on the first one snapped in about an hour, then the second and third. We nicknamed the diesels, "Snap, Crackle and Pop."
(Note: Moments after I wrote that sentence, word came that two of three diesels failed at the Tokai Station as well.)
In the US, we supposedly fixed our diesels after much complaining by the industry. But in Japan, no one tells Tokyo Electric to do anything the Emperor of Electricity doesn't want to do.
I get lots of confidential notes from nuclear industry insiders. One engineer, a big name in the field, is especially concerned that Obama waved the come-hither check to Toshiba and Tokyo Electric to lure them to America. The US has a long history of whistleblowers willing to put themselves on the line to save the public. In our racketeering case in New York, the government only found out about the seismic test fraud because two courageous engineers, Gordon Dick and John Daly, gave our team the documentary evidence.
In Japan, it's simply not done. The culture does not allow the salary-men, who work all their their lives for one company, to drop the dime.
Not that US law is a wondrous shield: both engineers in the New York case were fired and blacklisted by the industry. Nevertheless, the government (local, state, federal) brought civil racketeering charges against the builders. The jury didn't buy the corporation's excuses and, in the end, the plant was, thankfully, dismantled.
Am I on some kind of xenophobic anti-Nippon crusade? No. In fact, I'm far more frightened by the American operators in the South Texas nuclear project, especially Shaw. Stone & Webster, now the Shaw nuclear division, was also the firm that conspired to fake the EDG tests in New York. (The company's other exploits have been exposed by their former consultant, John Perkins, in his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.)
If the planet wants to shiver, consider this: Toshiba and Shaw have recently signed a deal to become world-wide partners in the construction of nuclear stations.
The other characters involved at the South Texas Plant that Obama is backing should also give you the willies. But as I'm in the middle of investigating the American partners, I'll save that for another day.
So, if we turned to America's own nuclear contractors, would we be safe? Well, two of the melting Japanese reactors, including the one whose building blew sky high, were built by General Electric of the Good Old US of A.
After Texas, you're next. The Obama Administration is planning a total of $56 billion in loans for nuclear reactors all over America.
And now, the homicides:
CNN is only interested in body counts, how many workers burnt by radiation, swept away or lost in the explosion. These plants are now releasing radioactive steam into the atmosphere. Be skeptical about the statements that the "levels are not dangerous." These are the same people who said these meltdowns could never happen. Over years, not days, there may be a thousand people, two thousand, ten thousand who will suffer from cancers induced by this radiation.
In my New York investigation, I had the unhappy job of totaling up post-meltdown "morbidity" rates for the county government. It would be irresponsible for me to estimate the number of cancer deaths that will occur from these releases without further information; but it is just plain criminal for the Tokyo Electric shoguns to say that these releases are not dangerous. Indeed, the fact that residents near the Japanese nuclear plants were not issued iodine pills to keep at the ready shows TEPCO doesn't care who lives and who dies whether in Japan or the USA. The carcinogenic isotopes that are released at Fukushima are already floating to Seattle with effects we simply cannot measure.
Heaven help us. Because Obama won't.
***
Greg Palast is the co-author of Democracy and Regulation, the United Nations ILO guide for public service regulators, with Jerrold Oppenheim and Theo MacGregor. Palast has advised regulators in 26 states and in 12 nations on the regulation of the utility industry.
Palast, whose reports can be seen on BBC Television Newsnight, is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow for investigative reporting.
Many conservatives and pro-nuclear industry people will try and spin that without nuclear energy, much of the World's energy needs couldn't be met, and thus, standards of living and economies would suffer without it. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are more and more new ways of generating power now from renewable, sustainable, and safe sources. Solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal power stations could all be refined, expanded, and made even more efficient, if our government in the U.S., and others across the globe, were forced to commit just a fraction of their resources to a focused effort to develop and implement these resources. Similar to the space program in the 1960s-early '70s. Corporate profits, or your, your families, and your descendant's health, which is more important to you?
We need to provide you a little information about our assessment of any threats to the Alaskan and western U.S. areas from the Fukushima reactor complex unfolding disaster. First, we need to put things in perspective, a little. We have to remember, fires and radioactive releases occurring there are essentially a "point-source", and a fairly small-scale one. Between the coast of northern Honshu island, and the western coast of North America, lies 9000 km of the Pacific Ocean. While it is true that the jet stream is usually moving from Japan, east across the Pacific, to North America, weather systems in this flow continually act to disperse the very small volume of contaminated air (which would contain microscopic particles of radioactive material), and incorporate it into clouds, and eventually precipitation, which then would be rained out. Of course, that means it would then fall into the ocean, where it could be taken up by marine life, and enter the food chain.
This chart of contours of the height at which the atmospheric pressure equals 500 millibars (which is usually centred around 5500 metres, +/- 500), illustrates the jet stream flow across the Pacific today, 17 March 2011. The flow is parallel to the contours, moving generally east-west. You can see there are two large upper-level low pressure centres in the jet stream flow between Japan and western North America. In each of these large upper-level lows, there are several smaller disturbances containing clouds and areas of precipitation, cleansing the atmosphere. For this reason, we here at the A.P.R., are not all that worried about any direct radiation threats/exposure for us here in Alaska, or the western U.S., at least at the current time. Not so for the unfortunate people of Japan, and possibly closely surrounding areas like Korea, northern China, or far southeast Russia. However, full scale worst-case "meltdown" explosions/fires, and spent fuel explosions/fires have not yet occurred at Fukushima. We will certainly be monitoring this every day, as best we can, and will give you our assessments. There are more radiation monitoring sites being set up now in Alaska and the Western U.S., which is a good thing, and many scientific agencies are gearing up computer modeling, but all of these efforts still need the ultimate information, about just how much, and for how long, radioactive materials will be released. Cheers.
John Perkins is one of the leading progressive voices in the U.S.A. He gained his greatest notoriety in 2005, after the publication of his smash best-selling book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9780452287082-0 "Economic hit men," John Perkins writes, "are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as Empire but one that has taken on terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization."
John Perkins should know — he was an economic hit man for an international consulting firm that worked to convince developing countries to accept enormous loans and to funnel that money to U.S. corporations. Once these countries were saddled with huge debts, the American government and international aid agencies were able to request their "pound of flesh" in favors, including access to natural resources, military cooperation, and political support. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is the story of one man's experiences inside the intrigue, greed, corruption and little-known government and corporate activities that America has been involved in since World War II, and which have dire consequences for the future of democracy and the world.[publisher's notes]
He has written several books since, describing how the "Corporatocracy" in collusion with the U.S. government and military, has built the shadowy, globalised empire and predatory capitalistic economic structure that keeps billions of people in poverty, and is leading to global environmental destruction. He runs a web-site, http://www.johnperkins.org/,
that he writes articles for, on current events, and a number of other interesting topics.
Before he decided to speak out about his life as an "economic hitman", he had spent many years working with tribes in the Amazonian rain-forest in Ecuador, whom he first met during his Peace Corps days in the late 1960s. He studied their cultures, and learned from their shamanic practioners, their ways of healing and advising their people. He led groups for many years to these tribal areas, many of whom were distinguished scientists and researchers, so that they could learn as well, what he had, of their cultures. One of our favourite books, here at A.P.R., that he wrote, The World Is As You Dream It, documents his work in Ecuador in the 1990s.
Through an interesting coincidence, your lead editor was able to get in contact with John, and he liked our work, and agreed to an interview with us. It is a great honour for us to have been able to talk with him, and we learned a great deal. What follows is a transcription of the audio interview, conducted by phone from here in Anchorage, with him in Seattle. This interview is about basic current events and was conducted three weeks ago. We will have a follow-up interview, at a later date, to ask him questions about his work in South America, and to share some concepts he has learned from the tribes there, which he feels would benefit us all. Below, is a link to the actual audio of the interview. Click on it, and then click on the file entitled, "01Track1.wma", if you wish to listen to it.
APR:Our first question is probably one you always get, but what exactly is an Economic Hitman, and what role did you play in that process, when you wrote your book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, which was a huge best-seller. Some of the people listening probably haven’t read that, and so I guess we would need a quick summary about what that means.
JP: Well I think it’s fair to say Michael that we “Economic Hitmen” really have created the world’s first truly global empire without using the military, for the most part. The military sort of stands in the background. We do this in many different ways. However the most common is that we’ll identify a country that has resources our corporations covet, like oil. Then arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one it’s sister organizations. And yet that money actually never goes to that country, instead it goes to our own corporations to build big infrastructure projects in that country, things like power plants and highways and industrial parks that benefit a few wealthy people, wealthy families, but don’t help the majority of the people at all, who really can’t afford much electricity, don’t drive cars, or can’t get jobs in industrial parks, because they don’t hire many people. Yet the citizens of that country are left holding a huge debt that they can’t repay ultimately. And so at some point, we Economic Hitmen go back and say “since you can’t repay your debt, vote with us on the next United Nations vote, or allow our corporations to go in and take your oil, or whatever other resources, without worrying about environmental damage, or social concerns. Or let us build a military base, or something along those lines.”
And in the few cases where we fail, I mentioned in my book how I failed with the democratically elected president of Ecuador, Jaime Roldoz, and with Omar Torrijos, of Panama. In those cases, the “Jackals” [CIA, or other covert mercenary operatives, eds.] go in and either overthrow governments or assassinate their leaders. Both Roldoz of Ecuador and Torrijos of Panama were assassinated because I couldn’t bring them around, they would not be corrupted, they stood up to me, they would not be corrupted. And then in the few instances where the “Jackals” also failed, then we send in the military, and that’s what happened to Sadam Hussian in Iraq.
APR:That was going to be one of my questions, is that there are a number of theories out there as to what actually happened in Iraq that caused this country to invade it. One of them was that he [Saddam Hussein] was manipulating the oil market, creating instability in it, making Saudi Arabia unhappy, and other countries too, as well as the oil companies. And the other one was that the “neo-conservatives”, the other theory, was that they wanted to make Iraq a free-market paradise in the Middle East with no oversight or regulations, and to actually use it as a model, for what they wanted to do with other countries. Is that what you see as being responsible for what happened in Iraq?
JP: Well, I think all of that’s the case. And I talk in Confessions of an Economic Hitman about this amazing deal we put together in Saudi Arabia. We had this oil embargo levied against the United States by OPEC and as a result I was sent over to Saudi Arabia to make sure that would never happen again. We knew we had to bring Saudi around because it was the largest producer of oil, and really controlled OPEC. We struck this deal with the house of Saud, the royal family, whereby they agreed not to increase the price of oil any higher than the price our oil companies wanted it, and they agreed to keep the oil flowing, and they also agreed to only sell oil for dollars, which put the dollar in a much stronger position. And a number of other things, and we [the U.S.] agreed in turn to protect the house of Saud and keep it in power. After that, we [the U.S.] decided we should do the same thing with Sadaam Hussein, Iraq was the next largest producer of oil. But he wouldn’t buy into it. And there were others, two more of course, but that was the big one, why we first sent the troops in, because we couldn’t take him out, the Jackals couldn’t take him out, he was too careful, security was high, he had a lot of look-alike doubles which made it difficult. And then after his military was destroyed by the first Bush administration, we figured he be sufficiently chastised that he’d now come around. He didn’t, so the second Bush administration really sent in the forces and took him out of course, as we all know. Those are all factors, another important one though is that the U.S. industrial complex likes wars, because it makes a lot of money off wars. Vietnam was long gone, we’d been looking for another war for awhile. It’s interesting that in the film South of the Border, in an interview with Kirchner, the former president of Argentina, he tells Oliver Stone, that Bush Jr. admitted to him that the U.S. economy is based on war.
APR:Yeah, that’s one thing that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out about in 1967, one year before to the day he was killed. And that’s one thing a lot of progressive people have wondered, do you think that the corporatocracy, the military industrial complex, those entities we all know run things, have they actually been responsible for people like MLK’s, RFK’s, assassinations, or even Paul Wellstone, the progressive senator from Minnesota who was killed in a plane crash in 2002?
JP:I have no doubt about it. I recently wrote about that in Tikkun magazine, and it’s been on my website, johnperkins.org, in fact I encourage your listeners to go to my website and subscribe to my newsletter, also Facebook and Twitter me at Economic_Hitman, because I send things out about current events all the time. Right now alot is focusing on Egypt and the Middle East.
You know it’s always been interesting that most of us know that President Eisenhower in his farewell address as president, warned about the military industrial complex. And you have to ask yourself, why didn’t he ever mention this when he was president and had the power to do something? Why didn’t he ever speak about it again? And the answer is pretty obvious, he knew he could get away with it once, but before that and after that, he couldn’t do it. So the next president comes along, Kennedy, the only president in my lifetime who wasn’t financed by big corporations, his campaign was financed primarily by his father. And he went after U.S. Steel in a big way, and U.S. Steel was the backbone of the U.S. economy in those days. And the president of U.S. Steel at the time absolutely hated Kennedy, and turned a lot of the business community against him. At the same time, the CIA and Pentagon became incensed at Kennedy because of the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis when they wanted us to take out the missiles, rather than reach an accord with Khrushchev, and so Kennedy was taken out. And I have no doubt that the CIA was deeply involved in his assassination. There’s a new book out called JFK and the Unthinkable that goes into a tremendous amount of detail about that, very, very well covered. Then Robert Kennedy tried to follow in his footsteps, he was taken out, MLK, yes, I think that anyone who really speaks out, and has power, and has immediate impact on people in terms of rallying them and exposing the truth is in a very dangerous position, and I think since that time, every U.S. president has been very aware of that.
And then of course, there was the character assassination of Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, and Linda Tripp. Linda Tripp was a real economic hitwoman, she’d come out of the Pentagon, she’d come out of the Bush Administration, the first Bush Administration. And we learned from all that, today, you don’t have to take a president out with a bullet, you can do it by assassinating his character. And we’ve seen shots fired across the bow of Obama with these questions, is he really American, was he born in Indonesia, you know, is he a Muslim, these questions are warnings to him. That if he steps out of line, he can be taken down too, and it doesn’t have to be with a bullet anymore.
APR:Right. That’s a very good point. Maybe we should move on to the economic crisis, I think that has a direct impact on what’s happening in the Middle East right now and one will kind of lead into the other. So, most people I think, assume that the economic crisis that started in 2007 was a result of the “housing bubble” where real estate became overvalued, and subprime loans, risky loans, were let out and then repackaged and sold as really confusing derivatives and securities, which nobody really understands. And that it basically was caused by unregulated banking and financial industry practices. But I know you speak a lot about this and have a better picture about what actually happened.
JP: Well certainly deregulation played a big role in it. When I was in business school in the late 1960s, I was taught that we’d never have another depression like we had in the 1930s because the regulations were in place to protect us. And I think that was true but they went down. The Glass-Steagall that was taken out under Clinton, for example, but there’s a whole series. And that had an impact. But the greater impact, is that we’ve been in a phase that I call “Predatory Capitalism”. I wrote extensively about this in Hoodwinked. It really got underway in the 1970s when I was an economic hitman, but it caught on in a big way in the U.S. when Reagan came in the 1980s, and Thatcher in England. And they all embraced the theories of Milton Friedman, from the Chicago School of Economics. And his guiding principles, there’s three really for business. They say the only responsibility of business is to maximise profits. Regardless of everything else. Regardless of social and environmental costs, disregard all that. The second principle is that business shouldn’t be regulated, or at least, minimise all regulations on business. And the third one is that everything should be run by private business, privatise the schools, the jails, and the military as we’re seeing happening in Afghanistan today. And beginning in the 1970s, these principles were adopted by every U.S. president since, Democrat and Republican alike, and they’ve created a failed global economic system, an economic system, where less than five percent of us who live in the U.S. consume almost 30 percent of the World’s resources. That’s not a viable model, not something you can pass on to India, or Africa, or Latin America. You can’t do it, it would take five to six planets to make that happen. So there is a huge underlying fallacy to the system. We need to come up with a different approach to our economics, we need to move out of this period of what I call “predatory capitalism”, into a form that is much more compassionate and into a form that says business can make profits and give a decent rate of return to their investors, but let’s do so within the context of creating a sustainable, just, and peaceful World. Let’s understand that businesses are here to serve us the people, not just a few wealthy investors.
APR:Everyone in the progressive community I think understands that, but with the corporate control of the media, it just seems like it’s so hard to get that message out and to get people to understand that. For us here, it just seems like an extreme uphill battle for this to happen, and we don’t have I think the luxury of decades of time to try and fix this, because we’re facing things like global environmental collapse, overpopulation, and resource depletion. So what would you say about that? As far as, you know, are we approaching these crises, and in the next 20 to 30 years, really, unless things change quickly, could there be some big problems?
JP:Unless things change, there will be big problems. There are already some big problems, half the World is starving to death, or on the verge of starvation. Doomsday has come to three billion people on this planet. And we need to recognize and understand that, it’s a huge problem for us. We need to understand that our children and grandchildren can not inherit a World we would want to see them inherit, unless every child on this planet inherits that World. And this is new, it used to be that we only needed to worry about Alaska, or people in Alaska, Washington State, if you live there, as I do. Or the United States. But today we have to understand that we are an incredibly interdependent World, and we’re truly living on a fragile space station. But unlike a space station our astronauts build, this one doesn’t have any shuttles. We’re stuck on it, we can’t get off, we’ve got to do something and realise that we are very well integrated. And that the only way we’re going to have Homeland Security, anywhere, is when we recognise the the whole World is our Homeland. It isn’t Alaska, it isn’t Washington State, it isn’t the United States, it’s the whole World. And we better catch on to that, and I think we are. I’ve seen tremendous changes in the six years since Confessions published, and I’ve been out on the road, almost constantly, in the United States, China, Latin America, Iceland, and many other places. I’ve seen a real change in consciousness in these six years, and six years is a pretty short time really. It may seem long to you or me, but it’s really a short time in historical terms.
APR:That’s great, because we all need to hear good news, because it seems like most of the what we hear is bad. I think we should talk about Egypt, and the significance of that, and to the global economic picture and the mutant form of Capitalism, the predatory Capitalism you’ve been talking about. Are these popular uprisings in Tunisia, and Egypt, and then possible ones to come, are they a direct response to this sort of predatory Capitalistic structure?
JP: Well they are, and in Latin America, it’s happened in ten countries, where there have been significant changes in less than a decade. It’s been amazing, what’s happened in Latin America, and it hasn’t been as violent as what we’re seeing in the Middle East, so it hasn’t made the news as much. But it’s happened through a democratic process. And now it’s happening in the Middle East, and yeah, people are speaking loud and clear, they’re rising up and saying, “we don’t want this brutality anymore” ,”we don’t want to be ruled by these terrible dictators who keep us in dire poverty”.
And we’re really hearing the voice of the people. At the same time, now we’re certainly seeing a tremendous amount of jockeying going on, the Economic Hitmen are in Egypt big-time, and they’re trying to get Vice President Suleiman to take over, and we have to remember, he was head of the Secret Service, in Egypt. He had and still has very close ties with the CIA, very close ties with the Israelis and Mossad, and he’s not what the people want, but I’m sure he’s what the Corporatocracy wants. And certainly what the Israeli government wants, and so there’s a struggle going on, and once you overthrow a dictator, you’ve got an amazing vacuum, and no matter where you are, you never know what’s going to happen. And of course, the United States and Israel do not want to see the Moslem Brotherhood take over. And I think the people don’t want to see Vice President Suleiman take over. So it’s very interesting, what’s going on there right now.
APR:Yeah, do you think other countries nearby, like Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, have any potential for uprising like this, and what would do for our economic picture in this country. Would there be oil supply shortages, or oil supply increases, that could impact our economy?
JP: It’s very very difficult to say what could happen. I wish I had a crystal ball that would tell me that, but I don’t. We really don’t know. The one model we have to base this on is Iran, where you went from a very brutal CIA-supported dictator, the Shah, to this regime that has basically been run by the Mullahs, and it has not been a particularly good experience for most Iranians, or anyone else. On the other hand, I think probably Iranians under the Mullahs are a lot better off than the Iraqis under the U.S. military occupation. And that plays a major factor, countries in the Middle East have seen how Iraq has gone from what they had under Sadaam Hussein, nobody can deny he was not a good leader. But to much, much worse, under U.S. occupation. On the other hand, Iran with it’s Mullahs, has done better than Iraq. And that certainly is sending a message in the Middle East. It’s very unfortunate, I think, that we’ve put ourselves in this position. Rather to defend good presidents, democratically elected presidents, like Mossadegh in Iran, who we basically overthrew in the early 1950s. And who was then replaced by the Shah, and who was then replaced by the Mullahs. Rather than supporting those really good movements, we’ve stepped in and replaced them with people who would keep the oil companies really happy, and our big corporations happy. And in the process, we’ve put ourselves in the position of being looked at by much of the World as a very materialistic power. It’s really unfortunate, and we have to do everything we can to turn that around, and truly lead the World into a democratic process. And I think it’s up to us, the American people, to insist on that happening.
APR:Do you think that can actually happen in this country? It just seems to us, that the corporate media being so powerful, and voices like yours and Noam Chomsky’s totally excluded from any participation in the mass media, it just seems so difficult.
JP: That depends on how you define the mass media Michael. You know, if you talk about the mass media as being NBC and CBS and Fox, and CNN, then, you’re right. But I think a great deal of the World now sees that as irrelevant. I know most young people that I talk to, I have great hope from the young people, when I travel around to colleges. They don’t even pay much attention to that media, they get most of their information off the internet. And you know, the power of the internet, the power of media like yours, like what you’re doing right here, is very very strong today. Confessions has sold over a million copies. And I have a number of other books out there. So Noam Chomsky is heard, around the World, and he may not be heard on Good Morning America, but he is heard around the World, and all of these voices, are a great hope, and the blogging that’s going on, and the alternative media, and the streaming. I can talk to a small radio station someplace in Arizona, and can get questions texted in to me from South Africa, and the Phillipines, and Indonesia. And that happens, it’s quite remarkable today, how we have created this alternative media.
APR:You’re absolutely right about that, I’m sure your interview today is going to be heard by people all over the country, and probably all over the World, at some point. I really thank you John, it has been a great honour talking with you, we look upon you as one of the most prominent progressive voices in the country, and we wish you all the best in your endeavours. We really encourage all our readers to visit your website, johnperkins.org.Because there are some great things on there, and hopefully we’ll have the pleasure of talking with you again at some point.
Are the spreading uprisings, revolts, and revolutions enveloping the Middle East/North Africa, part of a "shift in global consciousness"? Some people think so, this comment, written about the link for global uprising coverage, http://www.commondreams.org/uprising demonstrates what some "new-age" type people are thinking lately:
Posted by lucidpanther
Feb 18 2011 - 11:36pm
"What is happening in the Arab world is part of a worldwide revolution of consciousness - the old paradigms of hierarchy, authoritarianism, corporatism, oligarchy, parasitic capitalism, materialism, etc. are breaking down .
America , being part of the world, will also undergo turmoil, chaos, revolt against the system.
The Wisconsin and Arab protests are intricately connected at a deep level. On the surface they appear isolated from each other, but they are both part of a morphogenetic field http://www.experiencefestival.com/morphogenetic_fields - a phrase coined by Rupert Sheldrake -sweeping across the world.
These upheavals will increase and spread worldwide and they are representative of a kind of awakening and a tectonic shift in human consciousness.
American philosopher Ken Wilber outlined how these memes of collective consciousness evolve in his 'Integral Politics" theory.
The monetary system, which is a house of cards designed to protect the few powerful corporate entities and the international banking system, will collapse and America will experience the same kind of unrest, riots, and upheaval as we are seeing around the world.
The thieves, the capitalists, the corrupt parasites have reached the end of the line . Their time is up. They will use deadly force to retain power but, in the end, their time is simply up because the old paradigms are fast becoming obsolete.
These events will move rapidly and probably accelerate over the next two years."
We do here at A.P.R certainly feel that some sort of shift is occurring, globally, and often do ponder the possibility that all humans and beings are linked on some level, and exchange information. That perhaps the way technology has developed over the last several decades with the "Information Revolution", and continues to, is to mimic what occurs in the other realities, before/after death, and during our dream states. Which is to say, having instantaneous communication with anyone, at any time, when we desire it, and instant manifestation of our desires and fears.
Irregardless of all that, we recognise and accept that most of the successful uprisings and revolutions that bettered living conditions in many countries, across the world, over the last 200 years, had strong spiritual components to them. That there must be a spiritual awakening, in a general sense, among a great many people, for a successful, peaceful change to occur. Because we all have to really realise, and act in the beliefs, that all people are truly equal, and worthy of life, liberty, and the ability to make a good living in a sustainable manner that is helpful to one's society, and the environment. And to empathise and aid those people who are struggling for their dignity with aspirations to live healthy and happy lives, free from grinding poverty, insecurity, and repression. Because we know that their suffering diminishes us all. That the economic and political policies of the "developed world", not just the U.S., are at least partly, if not mostly, to blame for the misery of poverty for more than half of the globe's population. http://akprogressive.blogspot.com/2009/10/capitalisms-dirty-warssecrets.html
We have been greatly inspired by the events of the last six weeks across the Middle East/North Africa, which seems to have taken the World by surprise, much as did the fall of the Berlin Wall.
But these events were based on years of quiet, but increasingly large, collaboration of thousands, and then millions of people. And, like then, it is spreading now:
Here in Madison, Wisconsin, where protesters have occupied the State Capitol Building to stop the pending bill that would eliminate workers’ right to collective bargaining, echoes of Cairo are everywhere. Protesters here were elated by the photo of an Egyptian engineer named Muhammad Saladin Nusair holding a sign in Tahrir Square saying “Egypt Supports Wisconsin Workers—One World, One Pain.” The signs by protesters in Madison include “Welcome to Wiscairo”, “From Egypt to Wisconsin: We Rise Up”, and “Government Walker: Our Mubarak.” The banner I brought directly from Tahrir Square saying “Solidarity with Egyptian Workers” has been hanging from the balcony of the Capitol alongside solidarity messages from around the country.
My travels from Cairo to Madison seem like one seamless web. After camping out with the students and workers in the Capitol Building, I gave an early morning seminar on what it was like to be an eyewitness to the Egyptian revolution, and the struggles that are taking place right now in places like Libya, Bahrain and Yemen. Folks told me all day how inspiring it was to hear about the uprisings in the Arab world.
Some took the lessons from Cairo literally. Looking around at the capitol building that was starting to show the wear and tear from housing thousands of protesters, I had mentioned that in Cairo the activists were constantly scrubbing the square, determined to show how much they loved the space they had liberated. A few hours later, in Madison’s rotunda, people were on their hands and knees scrubbing the marble floor. “We’re quick learners,” one of the high school students told me, smiling as she picked at the remains of oreo cookies sticking to the floor.
I heard echoes of Cairo in the Capitol hearing room where a nonstop line of people had gathered all week to give testimonies. The Democratic Assemblymembers have been giving folks a chance to voice their concerns about the governor’s pending bill. In this endless stream of heartfelt testimonies, people talk about the impact this bill will have on their own families—their take-home pay, their healthcare, their pensions. They talk about the governor manufacturing the budget crisis to break the unions. They talk about the history of workers’ struggles to earn living wages and have decent benefits. And time and again, I heard people say “I saw how the Egyptian people were able to rise up and overthrow a 30-year dictatorship, and that inspired me to rise up and fight this bill.”
Solidarity is, indeed, a beautiful thing. It is a way we show our oneness with all of humanity; it is a way to reaffirm our own humanity. CODEPINK sent flowers to the people in Tahrir Square—a gesture that was received with kisses, hugs and tears from the Egyptians. The campers in Madison erupted in cheer when they heard that an Egyptian had called the local pizza place, Ians Pizza, and placed a huge order to feed the protesters. “Pizza never tasted so good,” a Wisconsin fireman commented when he was told that the garlic pizza he was eating had come from supporters in Cairo.
Egyptian engineer Muhammad Saladin Nusair, the one whose photo supporting Wisconsin workers went viral, now has thousands of new American Facebook friends. He wrote in his blog that many of his new friends were surprised by his gesture of solidarity, but he was taught that “we live in ONE world and under the same sky.”
“If a human being doesn’t feel the pain of his fellow human beings, then everything we’ve created and established since the very beginning of existence is in great danger,” Muhammad wrote. “We shouldn’t let borders and differences separate us. We were made different to complete each other, to integrate and live together. One world, one pain, one humanity, one hope.”
Since we only are able to write our articles weekly, or semi-weekly here, we can't keep you instantly abreast of all the latest developments, in this amazingly rapid transformation, in so many areas. But we will do our best to put them all in perspective, and talk to others, so they can help provide us and you with insightful information.
To that end, we have a special feature coming soon, an exclusive A.P.R. interview that occurred two weeks ago with an internationally-known progressive figure, who has written many amazing books, and is involved with many important causes.Stay tuned, and we will have that out as soon as we can. It takes some time to professionally edit, and transcribe a studio-recorded interview, so bare with us. Cheers.
p.s. I just came across this interesting chart today. It shows how low the US rates in many measures of quality of life, of the "industrialised" nations. Clearly, there is alot of work to be done. Only Hong Kong and Singapore outrank the US in terms of wealth inequality, and as mentioned before here, thanks to sentencing disparities for possession of different kinds of drugs in the senseless and useless "war on drugs", we have far and away, the highest per capita and actual number of prisoners, than any other of these nations.
This is why it is so imperative, that we "Just Say No" to the sociopaths in both political parties, but especially of course, the Republicans, who want to turn back the clock to the year 1900.
This article below, by Ms. DeMoro, the head of the largest professional nurses union, puts everything in great perspective, about just what working people are up against, and what needs to be done. Spread it around! http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/02/22-13
There should be two lasting lessons to emerge from the heroic labor-led protests in Wisconsin.
First, working people, with our many allies, students, seniors, women’s organizations, and many more, are inspired and ready to fight.
Second, we need to send a clear and unequivocal message to the rightwing politicians and those in the media suggesting further concessions from working people.
Working people did not create the recession or the budgetary crisis facing Washington or state or local governments, and there can be no more concessions, period.
What should be very apparent is that the right wants to scapegoat workers and their unions, and are trying to exploit the economic crisis for an all out assault on unions, public employees, and all working people in a campaign that is funded by far right, corporate billionaires like the Koch Brothers.
Their goal is no less than to break unions and silence the voice of all working people who fight for better working conditions and improved standards for all working people.
For example, while demanding major cuts in public pensions, the right also wants to make sweeping cuts in Social Security, even though Social Security is in sound economic shape.
What all working families should know:
1. Who caused the economic crisis? Banks, Wall Street speculators, mortgage lenders, global corporations shifting jobs from the U.S. overseas.
2. Who is profiting in the recession? Corporate profits, 3rd quarter of 2010, were $1.6 trillion, 28 percent higher than the year before, the biggest one year jump in history. Meanwhile, average wages and total wages have fallen for all incomes, except the wealthiest Americans whose income grew five-fold.
3. Who is not paying their fair share? In U.S. states facing a budget shortfall, revenues from corporate taxes have declined $2.5 billion in the last year. In Wisconsin, two-thirds of corporations pay no taxes, and the share of state revenue from corporate taxes has fallen in half since 1981. Nationally, according to a General Accountability Study out today, 72 percent of all foreign corporations and about 57 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005
4. Are public employees overpaid? State workers typically earn 11 percent less, local public workers 12 percent less than private employees with comparable education and experience. Nationally, cutting the federal payroll in half would reduce spending by less than 3 percent.
5. Would pay and benefit concessions by public employees stop the demands? The right has made it clear it wants A- cuts in public pay, pensions, and health benefits, followed by B- restricting collective bargaining for public sector workers, followed by C- prohibiting public sector unions.
6. Will the right be troubled if cuts in working standards make it harder to recruit teachers and other public servants? No. Take public teachers many of whom have accepted wage freezes and other cuts in recent years. Many in the right have a fairly open goal of privatizing education and destabilizing public schools to make it harder for them to function serves this purpose. The right also salutes the shredding of government workforce, part of its overall goal to gut all government service and make it harder to crack down on corporate abuses or implement other public protections and services.
7. Will the right stop at curbing public workers rights? Employers across the U.S. are demanding major concessions from private sector workers, and breaking unions. Rightwing governors and state legislators are seeking new laws to restrict union rights for all private and public employees.
8. Does everyone have a stake in this fight? Yes. It’s an old axiom that the rise in living standards for the middle class in the 1950s was the direct result of a record rate of unionization in America. It is of course unions that won the eight-hour day, weekends off, and many other standards all Americans take for granted that are now often threatened with the three-decade long attack on unions spurred by that rightwing icon Ronald Reagan. The corollary is that increased wages and guaranteed pensions put money into the economy, with a ripple effect that creates jobs and spurs the economy for all.
So it’s time for all of us to say it loud:
No More Cuts in Public Sector Pay, Pensions, or Health Benefits
Balance Budgets By Closing Corporate Tax Loopholes, Restoring Fair Share Taxes on Corporations and Wealthy Individuals
Guarantee Retirement Security and Healthcare for All
Rose Ann DeMoro is executive director of the 160,000-member National Nurses United, the nation’s largest union and professional association of nurses, and a national vice president of the AFL-CIO.
