Jim Houle - Editor
45th Edition - January 29th, 2012

The Propaganda Buildup to Regime Change in Syria has gone on since last spring but almost no one in the US pays much attention. Partly this is because the stories that are floated on the air waves sound so much like the usual buildup to war: whether it be the NATO intervention in Libya last year, the recent Somalia intervention, or the Iraqi invasion back in 2003. The Syrian dictator Bashar Assad has kept most foreign journalists out and we are left with precious little of that bloody street fighting video our bored TV watchers can sink their chops into. When we tried to enter southern Syria ourselves last May, the border was suddenly closed while the Army proceeded to shoot unarmed protesters in the southern town of Daraa.

Last November, our Arab League vassals got President Assad to invite 165 “observers”, wearing those orange vests that highway workers normally wear around here, to see what Assad was doing. Their mission expired recently and there was little enthusiasm to risk further stray bullets on the streets. They were unsuccessful in curbing the bloodshed and opposition groups within Syria felt they had merely whitewashed the Assad regime's suppression. A spokesman for the Syrian National Council, Burban Ghalioun, complained that: “conditions did not allow observers to submit an objective report”. Nevertheless, the Qatar foreign minister bravely stated: “We are with the Syrian people and with their will and their aspirations” ( NYT -1/22) and wanted foreign troops to enter so long as they were not Qataris. Most of the Arab League seems to want the UN to bail them out and apply a little white wash to the rebellion, as had worked so well in Libya. Nevertheless, a smaller contingent went back to Syria last week to monitor conditions in the restive city of Rankous near the Lebanese border from which the government had earlier withdraw its troops. The observers never made it into town. One member of the team said that Syrian Army officers sitting astride a ring of tanks shelling the deserted town told them it was too dangerous, even with those orange vests. The head of the Arab League, Nabil al-Araby, said the 22-member body decided to suspend the monitors’ mission in Syria because of “a severe deterioration in the situation and the continued use of violence.” (Had they expected a meshoui – a ceremonial young camel roast?)

Will Israel Be Pleased By Regime Change?
We ask if there is any benefit to the United States, or to our dearest ally Israel, in setting Assad aside. He has not threatened his neighbors, has not taken arms against Israel in 45 years and has not pushed very hard for the return of the Golan Heights as ordered by UN Security Council Resolution Number 242 after its seizure by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War. Syria has admittedly operated independently of the United States and supported the Hezbullah in Lebanon in the transit of weapons and missiles from Iran for defense of their southern border. Yet the Assads, father and son, have cooperated in arresting Al Qaeda agents for the CIA, in the clandestine imprisonment and torture of US prisoners shipped abroad, and actually supported the US with troops in that wonderfully short 1991 Gulf War. However, if we replace Bashar with an even more cooperative ruler, we may further isolate Iran, perhaps bring Turkey into the US regional alliance, suppress Hezbullah activity in Lebanon, and grease the skids for Lebanon's conversion to another US client state.

It might please Israel by eliminating the last unfriendly Arab country on their border, although it seems more difficult every day to please the Israelis. Such a regime change would be costly and probably lengthy, for Syria is better armed, more centrally controlled than Libya, and more than twice the size of little Libya. The United States military and economic muscle may not be able to handle another war front just now. Even if replaced, could the next regime harness, as well as Bashar Assad has, those who would make trouble on the Israeli border and would it be worth all the bother just now when Tel Aviv is so taken up with the threat of a nuclear Iran?

Who Wants Regime Change?
France, always willing to do what they can to buff-up their tarnished glory as protector of Greater Lebanon and Syria, asks: “How about Another No Fly Zone?” We do remember, surely, how this NATO tactic eliminated Libya's air force and turned much of Tripoli into a pile of rubble, all under the guise of protecting civilian lives. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls for Syrian regime change and predicts a civil war but does not exactly sign on to the no-fly zone tactic complete with the saturation bombing that this would likely bring about. Phillip Giraldi, a former CIA man, (American Conservative – Jan.18th) claims that there are contingents of French and British Special Forces on the ground already in Syria along with Italian and US/CIA communications specialists. However, the claim that defectors from the Syrian Army are a big factor in the rebellion is mainly a fabrication in Giraldi's view and no one seriously raises the fear that our old bugaboo Al Qaeda will rise again - that's really yesterday's news.

In back offices at the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom, neo-con holdovers have continued to feed a thin stream of stories about armed skirmishes and unsubstantiated civilian murders by the Syrian Army. The Foreign Policy Initiative, a neo-con think tank headed by William Krystal since the mid 1990s, has published: “Towards a Post Assad Syria”, Nov. 8, 2011, by Martin Indyk and John Hannah. Their rumours have included everything from fears of Turkish intrusion across northern borders to suggestions that massive amounts of left-over weapons are being airlifted to Turkish military bases from Libya. In the Asian Times, Aisling Byrne quotes them as saying: “the first stage of war in Iran is Syria: Nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria”. King Abdullah, our Saudi Vassal, opines that: “Syria has a long history of exporting terrorism beyond its borders and is a dangerous enemy of the United States” but the old king has always had a very esoteric set of informants. UN Ambassador Susan Rice, always righteous and eager to pile on, is sure that: “Syria is an urgent moral challenge and a growing threat to regional peace and security”. Robert Fisk, the Beiruti correspondent for London's Independent, says there is “no doubt that weapons are pouring into Syria from Assad's enemies in Lebanon” but he presents no evidence for this whatsoever and we have heard of no battles with well-equipped rebel groups yet. The presence of the 6th Fleet carrier George H.W. Bush bobbing around out there in the Western Mediterranean alongside Russia's lone aircraft carrier Kusnetsov, makes one wonder if we have not both been feeding the war monster once again. President Bashar Assad claims that foreign elements are causing all of his troubles. Turkey is definitely acting as a US military proxy prepared to invade when given the right signal (Ahmed Davit – Turkish Foreign Minister per Phillip Giraldi, Jan 12).

Just How Bad Is Dictator Assad?
Barbara Walters says that Bashar Assad is really a mild-mannered ophthal­mologist and very squeamish about blood. He released political prisoners upon taking power and instituted economic reforms and some modernizations. He was called back reluctantly from a quiet medical practice in London when his older brother Basil, the next in line, killed himself in a drunken auto crash in 1994. Next year, Bashar will preside over the fiftieth year of the Assad Dynasty in Syria. Always brutal in its repression of free speech and democracy, it has actually been a model of social peace, managing a stable country with poor but functional institutions, relatively safe cities, and a bustling life at least in the urban areas (Bassam Haddad: Director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Mason University in Aaliyah, Jan 18th). The withdrawal of state subsidies, economic mismanagement, and heavy favoritism towards the business class, have all eroded this stability recently. GDP grew at an impressive 3.2 % last year but is expected to now drop 2% (The Progressive: Reese Erich: Jan.2012). The country is ruled by the Alawites, a splinter Shi'ite religious faction that represents only 13 % of the population but are a well-disciplined political bloc. Sunni moslems make up the majority of the population and Christians comprise 10%.

While we can demand the downfall of authoritarianism, for the Syrians it has kept foreign intervention at bay, and prevented their becoming just another in our regional collection of client states. Syria has been one of the safest place on earth with no confrontations with Israel since 1982 when Israel stole the Shubra Farms during their withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Yet the Assads have supported Hezbullah and Hamas and somehow remain the only anti-imperialist Arab nation in the region. The opposition within Syria has not so far taken its cues from anyone outside Syria. The Syrian National Council, based outside Syria is the only opposition group that calls for outside intervention. Henry Kissinger argues that we should let the Syrians kill each other and not intervene directly. “Intervention is not seriously on the table yet” he grumbles.

While The New York Times has encouraged regime change, even they were forced to admit, in several articles, that there have been massive rallies in Syria in support of the government. "The turnout of tens of thousands in Sabaa Bahrat Square once again underlined the degree of backing that Mr. Assad and his leadership still enjoy seven months into the popular uprising. That support is especially pronounced in cities like Damascus and Aleppo, the country’s two largest" (Jan.13). This was further confirmed by a poll funded by the anti-Assad Qatar Foundation: " Syrians are supportive of their president with 55% not wanting him to resign" (Jan.2). If people in Syria do not want foreign intervention — a likely reason that so many attended pro-Assad demonstrations. This 55% was an increase from 46% that had earlier thought Assad a good president. No Main Stream Media in the US have bothered to report this however – it upsets the prevailing narrative. Even Stratfor, a conservative Intelligence Think Tank, said that “most of the opposition's more serious claims have proven grossly exaggerated or simply untrue.” and warned that Syrian Observatory should be viewed with skepticism. CIA has refused to sign off on the estimates of 3500 to 5400 killed that the UN Secretary General has been repeating. What about the so-called Free Syrian Army, which claims to speak for the Syrian people?  Like its Libyan counterpart, it appears to be yet another Made-in-the-USA militant group, by means of our ally Turkey, a fact alluded to by the pro U.S.-establishment magazine, Foreign Affairs. They ask: "Why does the Syrian military not fire upon their Free Syrian Army positions or launch a large-scale assault? The FSA fighters are positioned about a mile from the Turkish border, near enough to escape across if the situation turned dire."  Major Maher Numeiri speaking for the Free Syrian Army admits that “we do not have the arsenal necessary to confront the Assad regime directly”.

The Rumble for War and the Demands We Not Interfere
Syria has allies in Algeria, Iraq, Russia and China. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for intervention this past December and Syrian analyst Peter Harling warns that: “We have not seen anything this ominous in 15 years.” Demands for economic sanctions have been blocked by Russia and China at the UN. Correspondent Franklin Lamb in Beirut doubts their real effectiveness: “The history going back to Iraq and before shows that sanctions are not really effective in changing the behavior of a regime” (RT – 4 Dec 2011). The British based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, funded by Dubai with Saudi money, has published months of unsubstantiated data on civilians killed by Assad as well has the Syrian Transitional Council. No checking on these claims at hospitals and morgues inside Syria has been possible.

Petrodollar Implications
Pepe Escobar in the Asian Times 1/20 reports that the Gulf Counter-revolutionary Council, as he calls the GCC, supports the petrodollar dollar and supplies the world market with 25% of all oil. US supplies $120 billion in armaments to GCC, presumably to counter Iran. China wants to make more investments in the Middle East including Syria, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Iraq and Iran. The Saudis already export more oil to China than they do to the US. China could well propose to buy Saudi oil for Petro-Yuan instead of Petrodollars since there appears to be less and less advantage to the Saudis in the US Petrodollar Alliance as both the Dollar and the Euro weaken further.

We find it difficult to find any serious justification for pushing Assad Aside just now other than as a means to stimulate production of war materiel by the US military-industrial complex at a time when our domestic economy is wobbling.

Something is Rotten in Libya: Forty-eight hours after Hillary Clinton lands in Tripoli and calls for “Gadhafi to be captured or killed as soon as possible”, he is captured and brutally assassinated by the TNC. (Ruppee News 11-13-11). TNC is the Transitional National Council we stacked with ex-CIA operatives, a few al-Qaeda types, MI 5s from Whitehall, and assorted bag men. NATO was authorized by the UN (Resolution 1973, 3-17-11) to impose a “No Fly Zone” so as to protect civilians being threatened by Gadhafi in Benghazi and to immobilize Gadhafi's air defenses. The US and its allies subsequently hit 5900 targets in 9700 sorties and left much of the country in ruins.(NYTimes survey 12-18-11). NATO and the UN admit scores of unarmed casualties but won't come up with a death toll. This demolition derby took a mere 240 days. By comparison, Qadhafi had worked for 40 years to increase oil revenues to far more of the people than in most other countries. Individual income rose from $34 per year to $34,000 to day and the people have the best medical care and lowest infant mortality rates in all of Africa. The UN Human Rights Council commended Libya in its 2010 report for its remarkable progress. When confronted with grisly videos of Myomar Gadhafi's death, our own Hillary Rodham Clinton giggled “We came, we saw, he died.”(Christian Amanpour, ABC and Franklin Lamb of RT). The TNC 'democratic rebels' as we like to call them, after having assured Gadhafi's convoy of safe passage, then called in NATO bombers and then captured, tortured and brutally murdered him. The UN Human Rights Commission, the Russian Foreign Minister, Human Rights Watch and many others called for an investigation of this gross violation of the Geneva Convention concerning the rights of POWs. Hillary supported the investigation and showed not a trace of shame.

Smelly Suppression In Egypt: Hilary has just delivered our yearly $2.0 billion bribe to the Egyptian military junta to make sure they thoroughly suppress the democracy movement in Tahrir Square and do not allow a vote on a new Constitution for at least six months. This weekend, the Junta denied using force against protesters despite the many frightening videos including one showing a woman with her hajib pulled off and police clubbing her half-clothed body. There is no image in Arab society that could be more damning than this one. Better the police merely plead that their limited budget does not provide high speed internet service. Instead their media adviser, a retired general named Abdel Kato, accused the protesters of being “delinquents who deserve to be thrown in Hitler's ovens”. I begin to believe that it was Mubarak that actually kept the lid on these fascist lunatics.

Putrefaction in Yemen, Pakistan and Iraq: Obama made a drone Predator attack in Yemen with Hellfire missiles on New Mexico-born US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16 year old son (born in Denver). The grandfather of the family, a Fullbright scholar, protested this violation of the 5th and 6th Amendments to our US Constitution. Earlier President Obama announced to a nation-wide audience on TV (5-1-10) that US Navy Seals had killed an unarmed Osamah Bin Ladin in a “firefight”in Pakistan. (Note that the FBI has never brought charges against bin Ladin for 9/11 because of a lack of evidence). The tradition of violating human rights was well demonstrated by former President Bush back in 2006 when he arranged a kangaroo court in Baghdad to hang Rumsfeld's good buddy Saddam Hussein, without the benefit of a real defense in court nor the ability to bring forth evidence, witnesses, or any of our other revered Constitutional safeguards.

Something is Very Rotten in Washington: President Obama has reneged on his promise just last week to veto the Military Appropriations Bill. A rider attached to this big money bill allows American citizens to be arrested on suspicion of involvement in terrorism (undefined) in the United States or abroad, denied civil trials, and held in military brigs indefinitely without charges. There goes the 5th and 6th Amendments to the Bill of Rights once again! The so-called Homeland Battlefield provisions in the newly passed $662-billion defense authorization bill generated a surprisingly wide range of legal interpretations. There was a brief moment when civil libertarians were stunned to see President Barack Obama actually take a stand in favor of civil liberties after several years of rolling back the basic rights of citizens. Obama said that he would veto the defense bill if it contained a provision for the indefinite detention of American citizens by the Army: “The military does not patrol our streets” he lectured. While many predicted it, Obama has once again betrayed the civil liberties community and lifted the threat of the veto. Americans will now be subject to indefinite military detention and denied trial in federal courts. (Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley RSN (12-15-11).

The White House is now saying that changes to the law made it unnecessary to veto the legislation. With that ridiculous explanation, the administration went into full spin control, using language designed to obscure the authority just handed to the military. “I am not sure which is worse: the loss of core civil liberties or the almost mocking post hoc rationalization for abandoning principle” says Jonathon Turley. The Pentagon brass, the CIA, the State Department and 4 retired generals all opposed this as “strip-mining of your freedom to resist tyranny”. (R.Nader, 1-14-11). Once the Senate approved it 93 to 7 and the House to 286 to 136, Obama, our latest 'profile in courage' caved, explaining that he had found a loophole that allowed him not to enforce this unconstitutional incarceration except when he really had it in for someone. (Oh the wonders of a Harvard education!)

Something is Really Rotten in Damascus: We watch the turmoil in Syria, unable to sort the white hats from the black. France suggests another NATO no-fly zone, pleased as they were with the wide-spread demolition this tactic produced in Libya. A media build-up is underway to explain to us how that Evil Bashir Assad, previously a innocuous opthamologist in London, is employing snipers to kill civilians on the streets. “What's taking place is an attempt by the Arab League to accommodate the US and NATO against one of the few states in the Arab world that still says “no” to US influence.” (Professor Franklin Lamb: RT 12-2-11) The Arab League is dominated by rich US client states such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Emirates, Qatar, Oman and even poor Egypt. The UN High Commission for Human Rights, another willing US handmaiden these days, has put the death toll in Syria at 5,000 and recommended International Criminal Court action (the US is not a member). The Ambassador of the Universal Peace Foundation has called for a dialogue but “it seems that the West has taken the position that there can be no dialogue with the Evil Eye Doctor. The West is seeking a new regime in Syria as a tool to implement its own strategic interests in the region”. (RT.Com. 12-12-11) Arabic-speaking US soldiers, assured they were returning home from Iraq, have been transferred in dead of night to the Jordanian/Syrian border. (Sibel Edmond's Boiling Frog Post: 12-13-11). Turkish troops are also alleged to be gearing up for an assault across the Syrian border. Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reports that materiel from Gadhafi's abandoned arsenals and unmarked NATO aircraft are being ferried into Iskenderun, Turkey. The American Conservative reports that the CIA even refused to 'sign off' on the UN report of 3500 to 5000 killed in Syria because it is uncorroborated. They also discount mass defections from the Army, widely reported in the US, as a fabrication with few defections confirmed independently. We have found in the past that in circumstances like this, with almost no journalists allowed on the ground, rumors are easily constructed and quickly spread because visits to hospitals and morgues are blocked and access to soldiers and civilian observers refused. “Syrian government claims that it is being assaulted by rebels armed, trained and financed by foreign governments are more true than false” says Giraldi.

Something is Rotten in Denmark: So why do I quote Shakespear's Hamlet about the rottenness in Denmark? Upon Hamlet's return from university in England, he found his father poisoned, his mother quickly married off to the poisoner, Hamlet's uncle, and two of his best college friends bribed to arrange for Hamlet's death once he returns to university. His abuse of his love Ophelia has driven her to suicide. He has confronted evil and rottenness within his royal family and within himself. He finds no way to right all these wrongs, nor to escape the horror and the weakness that he sees most clearly within himself. He goes mad. Perhaps this will be our exit strategy as well. President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, who died this week in Prague said: “Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.”

”The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!”

Our nation-wide shock on September 11th, 2001 at seeing those two airliners penetrate the World Trade Center towers generated a sense of fear and vulnerability deep within our psyches. Seizing upon this, our national leaders convinced us that we must attack Afghanistan and Iraq, where those Al Qaeda terrorists allegedly came from. The majority of Americans still feel vulnerable to terrorist attack and have accepted that we must live in a era of endless war without any coherent rationale. Ten years later, these unending Pentagon battles abroad have become, in the words of the Washington Post's Sept. 5th editorial, our only growth industry. In a declining job market, they represent one of our very few successful jobs programs, employing everyone from GIs to weapons assemblers, from drone makers to private “security” firms protecting our occupiers abroad and taking on tasks our soldiers cannot do. No politician, including Barack Obama, will seriously challenge our huge military-industrial complex, nor question the Pentagon's brilliant propaganda machine that manufactures those new “enemies” we continually must find to justify our ever expanding war program with its enormous profits. Imagine how the Los Angeles Basin would collapse overnight into Depression should the war machine stop ordering new weapons from Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics.

Fear-Based Economics
Now, ten years after September 11th 2001, when 2606 innocent office workers were deliberately murdered, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth believes it is time to seriously examine how these people actually died and if their deaths were really necessary. Why now do the A&E 9/11 Truth people bring this up, after much of the evidence of that day's disaster has been destroyed or well hidden, and when Americans are fully burdened by their need for economic survival? It seems to many that the very shaky story of the 9/11 attack by foreign terrorists upon our Homeland was too quickly accepted by a public driven by fear and is still used as the rationale for our abject surrender to the war machine that drives our entire economy. We have since learned that none of the 19 alleged hijackers were Iraqis or Afghanis, but we invaded those countries anyway. The 19 alleged hijackers actually included 15 Saudi Arabian citizens, 2 from the Emirates, one from Egypt and one from Lebanon.

Keeping Fear Alive
During the past decade, A&E 9/11Truth, an organization of over 1500 Professional Architects and Engineers from all over the United States associated with 12,400 other supporters, have signed The 9/11 Truth Petition calling for a new and independent investigation of one key element of the 9/11 mythology. These engineers and architects, of whom I am one, do not believe that the two 110 story towers and the nearby 44 story WTC-7 building could have each fallen in less than 12 seconds, essentially in free fall merely as a result of the fires ignited by the crash of two airliners and the burn off of their jet-fuel. We find it very disturbing that official investigations have failed to address the extensive evidence of planted explosive devices and incendiaries that likely contributed to the fall of these buildings. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency that so thoroughly botched up New Orleans flood relief, supervised the wholesale destruction of 9/11 evidence prior to the official investigation and contrary to the recommendations of the National Fire Protection Association. FEMA quickly loaded 200,000 tons of structural steel on barges and shipped it off to India and China for recycling. Only a few hundred pieces are now available as forensic evidence showing the high temperature incineration of steel girders that could never have been ignited by the jet fuel on the planes. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) deliberately excluded many relevant facts from their report, such as the presence of chemical residues, particles of un-ignited incendiaries, nanothermite, and molten metal in the wreckage in their rush to close the books on this disaster.

An Investigation Designed To Fail
The 9/11 Commission was unable to explain away the collapse of neighboring WTC-7 eight hours later and therefore conveniently ignored it in their final report. The Bush 9/11 Commission was headed by Governor Thomas Kean of New Jersey and Congressman Lee Hamilton, who after allowing publication of the final Commission Report, wrote their own book trying to disassociate themselves from the official findings. They called it “an investigation designed to fail”. However, many Americans still believe that on 9/11 19 Al Qaeda terrorists were able, without outside help, to reduce the World Trade Center to a pile of smoldering debris in seconds and this mythical story continues to justify our unending wars in the Middle East.

We at Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth have limited our investigations to as examination of evidence concerning the unexplained free-fall of these three Manhattan skyscrapers in seconds. We have not indulged in speculation about who actually planned and executed the 9/11 attacks in New York, nor have we studied the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon that same day. The Pentagon and our intelligence agencies have refused to release the 80 sets of film they seized of the United Flight 93 crash nor allowed eye witnesses to be interviewed. Until they do, independent investigation of the Pentagon crash cannot get very far and the truth will remain hidden. Some learned analysts point to lack of any new attacks upon our Homeland as proof that our policies in Iraq and Afghanistan have been successful.

We believe that there is now sufficient evidence to conclude that World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2 and 7 were destroyed not by jet impacts and the burning off of jet fuel but by controlled demolition with explosives. We therefore call upon Congress to initiate a new investigation with full subpoena powers. We feel that America can no longer be held hostage by the government's absurd stories as justification for our continuing open-ended wars in the Middle East. Our work is dedicated to the victims and to the families of those who died on September 11th 2001 and to all throughout the world who have been affected, including the hundreds of New Yorkers still dying of cancer as a result of breathing the smoke and dust generated that day. If you are interested in learning more, in signing our petition, and perhaps joining in this effort, you will find additional materials including DVDs available at: www.911Truth.org.

“The $2.5 trillion deficit-reduction deal brokered by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner, and President Barack Obama is grotesquely unfair. It's also bad economic policy. In the midst of a terrible recession, it will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. At a time when the wealthiest people in this country are doing extremely well, and when their effective tax rate is the lowest in decades, the rich are not required to contribute one penny more for deficit reduction. When corporate profits are soaring and many giant corporations avoid federal income taxes because of obscene loopholes in the tax code, corporate America will not be asked to contribute one penny more for deficit reduction. On the other hand, working families, children, the sick and the elderly - many of whom are already suffering because of the recession - will shoulder the entire burden:” Senator Bernie Saunders of Vermont (Aug.5, 2011).

Selling the American People a Totally Deceptive Message
The forces of the right have managed to guide the American people into a sense of helplessness, lethargy and stupid complacency. We have been told that: (1) the rising national deficit is our most serious problem today; (2) taxes are sapping the initiative of our business community; (3) we have to cut domestic spending because increasing the taxes on the wealthy individuals just gives the government more money to spend; (4) we cannot afford to cut defense spending, for this would only lower our guard against those terrorists who would invade our shores and steal our freedom; (5) entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare are out of control and increasing our national debt; and (6) that if we were to plug tax loopholes on those businesses that contribute so much to our economic leadership in the world, we will inhibit them from expansion and from the creation of new jobs. Yet Noam Chomsky (Survey of International Policy Attitudes,Truthout, 5 August, 2011) insists that corporate power's ascendency over politics, society and both major political parties has moved corporations far to the right of the population which actually overwhelmingly favor taxing the rich, cutting defense spending, promoting education and protecting Social Security.

Slipping From Recession to Depression
Consumer spending is dropping relentlessly because people have less in their pocket and are afraid of the future. The Administration touted the 117,000 new jobs added in July, but carefully avoided mentioning that 175,000 new entry-level workers had hit the streets that same month looking for work. The total number of the unemployed actually rose. True unemployment hovers at 20% with no sign of recovery shown in the past 36 months, (No half-intelligent economist pays any attention to the thoroughly monkeyed numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing 9.1 %). Even the Wall Street Journal (8/8/11) does not expect any improvement in the jobs picture this year. Annual economic growth in the nation has slipped down to 1.3%, well below the Administration's forecast of 1.8% rise this year. Home ownership is at its lowest level since 1965 (CNN Money 8/8/11). We are well into the second dip of what could well be a real depression or a least very prolonged recession. Yet the debate is all about cutting spending.

So, What Did Roosevelt Do?
Franklin Delano Roosevelt demonstrated near the end of the Great Depression what Keynesian Economy Theory had explained and Republicans and Democrats have since employed whenever they thought about it at all: If economic stagnation is the problem, then put money out there to create public projects, create jobs, rebuild our crumbling bridges and roads, and watch the economy rebuild and expand. The vast majority of practicing economists today support this strategy, yet we are experiencing “the most drastic curtailment of public spending* in American history” (Chossudovsky, Global Research, 4 August, 2011). (*Please note that “public spending” as used here does not include defense spending nor corporate welfare (TARP) to the very large banks, where we have never before spent so much public money, even during WW II, and with so little measurable gain).

The conservative Tea Party cabal does not want to consider economic theory, it just complicates their simple, righteous rant that runs: “you can't spend what you do not have, the federal budget is no different than our family accounts.” Nor do they want to understand the truth that Social Security funds actually belong to the workers who paid in a portion of their paycheck and cannot be stolen away by Congress or Obama now. They do not comprehend that Social Security is not a part of the national debt. Oh my, that really confounds them.

Obama – What Have You Done To Your Voters?
Obama told us in his first State of the Union message (Jan. 2009) that a 2nd New Deal was in the wind: he promised us a program to rebuild our economy through spending on education, health, housing, renewable energy, and infrastructure programs. Then 2 1/2 years later on the night of August 2nd , he approved a rise in the debt ceiling from $14.3 trillion to over $15 trillion next year and promised us a mammoth austerity program. He agreed to cut $2.5 trillion over the next ten years from domestic programs like schools, roads, health case, and housing. As a concession, he was allowed to make just a little $3 billion cut in spending over a next two years, letting the really painful cutbacks impact us later. He calls this “a first step in solving the deficit crisis” but he apparently cannot see that long term reduction of the federal deficit requires a major near term economic stimulus. Rather, the Obama people feel that such small first year cuts in spending will “avoid harming the recovery” (White House 8/5/11) and still will allow the President to campaign in 2012 explaining how he is all in favor of austerity without anyone really having to feel any pain, at least not yet. The agreed-upon cuts will escalate exponentially after 2012. Can you follow the choreography here? Is George Bush's buddy Karl Rove still holed up in a back room at the White House?

Paul Krugman of the NYTimes opines: “In case you had any doubts, Thursday's (8/7/11) more than 500 point plunge in the Dow Jones industrial average and the drop in interest rates to near-record lows confirmed it: The economy isn't recovering, and Washington has been worrying about the wrong things. It's not just that the threat of a double-dip recession has become very real. It's now impossible to deny the obvious - that we are not now and have never been on the road to recovery.” While the new budget compromise seems to cut $350 billion from the Pentagon through 2024, the result is actually to increase defense spending slightly above the level the Ministry of War wanted. Michael Hudson, one of our leading economists and a Professor at the University of Missouri has put it into historical perspective: “Parliamentary control over budgets was introduced in 1917 during WWI to prevent ambitious kings or rulers from waging wars, because that was the only reason that governments ran into debt. Almost all governments, for hundreds of years, have been in balance as to their domestic spending. War is what pushes up the debt, as it has done in the United States” em>(Democracy Now August 5, 2011). After all, the Pentagon spends 56 cents of every dollar of tax revenues.

Tea Party types have made tax policy the issue behind the debt ceiling debate: they would not agree to raise the debt ceiling, although Congress had already passed all the spending bills that made the deficit soar to this level, unless the President agreed not to raise taxes and not to plug leaks in the taxing system that benefited the wealthiest. The debt ceiling had been raised 83 times since 1963, but this is the only time when tax policy has been allowed to control the debate. The President threatened that there would not be enough money to mail out Social Security checks. This is a deliberate deception. The Social Security Administration and retired Americans that have their money in the program already own the Treasury bills they bought with payrolls deductions and can write checks whenever they so wish – for the assets are already in the bank. Our President's lie is just another way of to frighten us. Under current payroll deduction rates and with the cap on income that can be taxed set at $106,800, Social Security becomes insolvent in 2036. Should this cap be removed, and higher income Americans pay their true share, then the fund will remain solvent far into the future.

Can We Dig Our Way Out and If So When?
Ralph Nader (Truthout Aug. 5, 2011) feels that President Obama has amazingly surrendered to a minority of the Republican Party. “The Republicans never expected Obama to give in entirely on tax increases for the wealthy, and other tax escapees. He foolishly agreed in Dec. 2010 to tie the debt ceiling to a grand bargain regarding deficits and revenues and thus gave himself little room for later negotiation. Roosevelt was advised in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, that what we needed was spending cuts, but he was wary of the then unorthodox views of Maynard Keynes, and applied a most orthodox mixture of spending cuts and tax increases. By 1938, when conditions were far far worse, Roosevelt finally saw that he had no alternative but to begin pumping money into the economy by any and all means. It is sad to think that history may actually be repeating itself. Today, Obama has almost no weapons with which to stimulate the economy, find new sources of revenues, or force serious cuts in war spending. Maybe he can still invoke the 14th Amendment and ignore the congressional Super-Committee meetings this fall that are intended to cut spending another two trillion, but this President doesn't not appear to be that much of a risk taker. Not this close to his run for another term anyway.

There are over 440 large commercial nuclear power plants operating in the world, mostly in the 30 post-industrialized countries. Many of the largest commercial plants have already exceeded their 40 year design lives but continue to operate, despite serious maintenance problems in many plants, and in the United States, with weakened inspection and regulatory controls. The Chernobyl disaster in 1989 and the Three Mile Island melt-down in 1986 illustrated the danger and astronomical long term costs associated with generating electric power by the seemingly simple task of boiling water when it is done in a highly radioactive nuclear reactor and then spinning this steam through a turbine to generate electric power. No big nuclear power plants have been built in the post industrialized world since the late 1980s when it became obvious to all capitalists that the economics of nuclear power was very unattractive, the risks far higher than any profit-making electric power company could handle, and the disposal of radioactive waste products seemingly insolvable.

The Safety Myth in Japan
Since the end of the Cold War, we have drowsed along and most of us are not informed about the threat that aging nuclear power plants pose. And then the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami set off our alarm clocks. Today, Japan has three reactors where enriched uranium has melted through the high pressure containments and threatens to enter the aquifers. School children are now required to carry Geiger counters at all times and trace amounts of radioactive iodine and cesium have been found within the bodies of school children living as far as 60 kilometers from the stricken nuclear plants. TEPCO, the operator of the Fukushima plants was panicked into pumping seawater into four reactors when reactor meltdowns occurred and where spent fuel cooling ponds lost all their water supply. Now this highly radioactive seawater is leaking out to the ocean as reactor melt-through occurs, compromising the reactor shells themselves. No solution to this catastrophe has yet been found. Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) has consistently down played the seriousness of the problem, refused to expand evacuation zones, and needlessly exposed the local population to radioactivity.

The Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Banri Kaieda, told the Vienna meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in June that “in Japan we have something called the 'safety myth' – an irrational and “unreasonable overconfidence in the technology of nuclear power”. Despite having been the world's only victims of nuclear war, and long after every major western country stopped building new plants, Japanese society holds to this “safety mythology”. Japan still has a number of big nukes in construction or on the drawing boards. (NYT Normitsu Onishi 6/24/11). TEPCO lacked the basic equipment needed for a disaster such as portable water pumps, robots capable of entering the containment structures and clearing debris, emergency equipment available to pump water to the spent fuel pools in the event of a power failure, and any disaster preparedness drills whatsoever. The power companies and the government have placed their focus on indoctrinating the public with the notion that nuclear power was absolutely safe. Any safety drills would only undermine that focus. PR (public relations) buildings were attached to nuclear plants to spread the message of safety as almost a “holy grail”. Initially set up as places where the male population could learn about technical side of nuclear power, the focus was changed after Chernobyl and the PR buildings converted into elaborate theme parks geared towards young mothers and children. School books have been rewritten throughout Japan to down-play nuclear accidents and to eliminate references to anti-nuclear activity in Europe.

Today, the Japanese Government holds to the radiation evacuation zone set at 20 kilometers even though radiation hot spots at high as 100 times acceptable levels were detected 60 kilometers away in the City of Fukushima (population 290,00). The government has responded to alarmingly high radiation levels by raising the acceptable radiation exposure for children from 1 milliseverts per year to 20 milliseverts. Despite government reassurances, tens of thousands of Japanese families have evacuated the greater Fukushima area and moved to the south and west. TEPCO warns that releases of radiation will continue and no solutions have yet been found for the problems of overheated reactor cores, dry spent fuel ponds, or radioactive water releases into the aquifer and the ocean front.

Deadly Dangers Right Here in the U.S. of A.
In the United States, 82 of our 104 commercial reactors have been in service more than 25 years and 66 of these have been licensed to operate another 20 years, well beyond what they were designed for. Problems with steel embrittlement in the reactor vessels, broken down and out of date control systems, and serious electrical malfunctions continue to plague these old plants while the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Agency) has weakened its system of inspections and relies increasingly upon the operators to detect and to report their own failings. (AP Impact Report 6/20/11). “Lord please lead me to confession booth”

In the State of California , we have four large reactors that match all too eerily the combination of The Three Deadly Dangers experienced at Fukushima: aging nuclear plants approaching the end of their design life; mindlessly located so as to straddle several major active earthquake fault; placed right on the shoreline where their emergency generators can be easily inundated and knocked out of operation by Tsunami waves. These emergency diesel driven generators supply power to the cooling water pumps essential to cooling the reactor cores and spent fuel pools. The four reactors, two at San Onofre near San Diego and two at Diablo Canyon north of Santa Barbara, were designed to withstand 7.0 and 7.5 Richter earthquakes respectively. The Fukushima quake was 8.9, almost 100 times more severe than what our American designers anticipated. Forty-five minutes after the quake, a 46 foot high tsunami wave hit the plant flooding the emergency generators and most of the control systems. Their break-water was only 5.7 meter (19 feet) in height. No breakwaters have even been erected at the San Onofre or Diablo Canyon. Furthermore, NRC only requires that emergency generators operate for four to eight hours, by which time it is a assumed that connections to the main power grid would be restored. The regional power grid in the Fukushima area was not reconnected for months.

Twenty-five miles up the Hudson River from New York City, the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant struggles along with numerous safety violations and maintenance worries. It is located within fifty miles of 20 million people. The two reactors at this site will compete their 40 year design life in 2013-15. The owner/operator Entergy has submitted an application to operate for another 20 years despite a catalog of NRC complaints including wholly inadequate fire detection and suppression system and many reports of radioactive leaks from spent fuel pools. The chief engineer of Fairewinds (a Burlington-based environmental and energy litigation consultants), Arnie Gunderson, explains that the emergency evacuation plans only cover a ten mile radius and the former head of Federal Emergency Management Agency, James Lee Witt, calls even this plan totally unworkable. (Harvey Wasserman, Huffington Green 6/16/11). Governor Andrew Cuomo has demanded the shutdown of Indian Point, while the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, wants its life extended 20 years and fears a blackout in the city more than death by radiation. A report released by the Union of Concerned Scientists showed that Indian Point had many engineering vulnerabilities, which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has largely ignored. Governor Cuomo said the report indicates “That of all the 104 nuclear plants across the country, the Indian Point power plant is most susceptible to an earthquake because Reactor No. 3 is on a fault line.”

At Vermont Yankee, a reactor with the same vulnerable General Electric design as the 4 units at Fukushima, the government just granted a 20 year extension to its operating license. The Fermi Reactor in Michigan has been leaking and suffering breakdowns for years and has not been thoroughly inspected in decades. The Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey, our oldest reactor, has a myriad of corrosion cracking problems, plus leaky valves, bad electrical cables and the like. The Davis Beese plant near Toledo came within two months of a breech of the reactor from corrosion. The Catawba plant in North Carolina was found to have 8,000 corroded steam tubes, more than half its total.

The cooling ponds for spent fuel rods have not been adequately protected at any of the nuclear sites in American. There is no cooling water supply for these ponds except from the power grid, and we have seen in Japan how easy this can be get knocked off line by a major quake. Beyond all these problems inside the plants, we still have found no means to permanently store spent fuel and probably never will. The steel and concrete casks that have now been offered as an alternate to endless life in the fuel pools, will probably not last more than 100 years and are very expensive: as much as $7 billion for the US spent fuel alone. Germany is moving all their depleted uranium to such casks. Uranium 238 has a half life of 4.4 billion years while Plutonium 239's half life is 80 million years.

Europe is Cooling Off to Nuclear Power
Germany is shutting down all 17 nuclear power reactors by 2022 and 8 of these are already out of service. Switzerland will phase out all of their plants as well and Japan is moving in the same direction. Italian voters just took the nuclear power option off the table, despite Premier Burlesconi's sponsorship of a program to introduce large nuclear power plants into Italy. Italy currently imports nuclear power from France. The French Republic is the leading nuclear power producer in Europe with 59 plants generating 79% of their electricity. They have not indicated, despite the news from Fukushima, any intention to shut them down any time soon. Nevertheless, we can expect Europe to move away from nuclear power as their existing plants approach their design lives, as solar power becomes more practical and no longer financially unreasonable, and the bad news from Japan continues.

Obama Extends the Life of Old Plants and Wants to Build New Ones
An expose by AP entitled “Aging Nukes” reveals that the “NRC and the nuclear power industry have been working in tandem to weaken safety standards so as to keep aging reactors within the rules.” (Jeff Dunn, Democracy Now 6/28/11). When the embrittlement of steel around reactor vessels has been found to be too advanced to squeak back under the rules, plant owners have requested and received waivers or special exceptions so as to keep running. Bombarding steel reactor vessels with neutrons for 30 or 40 years causes the steel to become very brittle and easily shattered when it undergoes a force like an earthquake. Senators recentrly called for an investigation after they learned that leakage of radioactive tritium from corroded reactors and buried piping had been found at 48 of the 65 nuclear plant sites in the US.

Seemingly unconcerned by all this, Obama announced this Spring “A New Nuclear Generation” and requested $56 billion in loan guarantees for the builders of these new and improved nukes in America. Not surprising, all of the engineers, metallurgists and physicists who designed our 104 reactors way back in the 1980s are now retired. The only country where reactor vessels are currently fabricated is Japan. Like a bad dream, TEPCO, the Tokyo owner/operator of Fukushima, is a major investor, along with Toshiba, in the Obama's South Texas Project that would build 2 nuclear reactors by 2017. While no notification of cancellation has been made, TEPCO is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

Helen Caldecott, an Australian physician and anti-nuclear activist, demands that all of the 104 reactors in the United States be shut down now. (Barry Vogel, Radio Curious, 6/26/11). She feels that this is the only real protection we have. When the next reactor springs a leak or goes into melt-down, it will be too late. She sees little if anything we can now do to protect ourselves from the radiation released at Fukushima nor from additional leakage of radioactive elements to the air and to the seas. She demands that the EPA begin to monitor radioactivity in fish and seaweed caught for US markets and that special testing of air for radioactivity, initiated immediately after Fukushima, be re-instated. The EPA had found in the weeks following Fukushima that radioactive materials like cesium and iodine-131 were being detected on US soil. Citing declining levels of radiation, the EPA has abandoned these extra tests in May. (Mike Ludwig, Truthout.org - 6/23/11).

It seems as if the heavens have rained upon Obama's nuclear picnic.

With a rebel force supported by neo-colonialists from France, UK and Italy attacking the Qaddafi regime in Libya, widespread demonstrations and heavy-handed suppression by Bashar al-Assad in Syria, brutal suppression by King Khalifa in Bahrain using Saudi tanks, and weekly mass marches upon the Presidential Palace in Yemen, the calm that is Egypt today is hard to believe - unless you are there.

Your Editor, Jim Houle returned from a visit to Egypt in late April and can tell you that the Egyptians are a most peaceful and accommodating people and that their sense of common identity as Egyptians above all else, goes back at least three thousand years and holds them together.

Yet the Army arrested American University Law Professor Amr Shalakany during a recent altercation and charged him with “insulting the military Supreme Council”. The Army Supreme Council were given sole executive power in Egypt after President Mubarrak resigned 11 February following weeks of mass demonstrations in Cairo, Alexandria, Port Suez and many other cities. The Army will rule by decree until parliamentary elections in the fall. While first seen as supporters of the people in the street, blocking State Security Police and goon squads from roughing up demonstrators, the Army have now drifted back to their more familiar role as defenders of law, order and privilege. They have reacted to further demonstrations and worker protest marches that have erupted sporadically during April and May with beatings, mass arrests for 'thuggery', and extended imprisonment without charges. The total extent of these protests has not been high but they have been frequent. However, this was not the case in Qena, upriver near Luxor, where the replacement of a Mubarrak crony as provincial governor by a Coptic Christian resulted in the people blocking the main rail line and highway to Aswan, and disturbing all commerce for weeks. (William Fisher - The Public Record: 5-9-11) In Port Suez, a popular trial was held outdoors to condemn the former governor of the province for corruption. The Army detained the former Energy Minister on charges of having given Israel a sweetheart deal on natural gas, and incarcerated Mubarrak's cabinet Ministers of the Interior, Finance, Tourism, Housing, Trade and Industry as well as the former Prime Minister. Mubarrak's sons Gamal and Alaa were also arrested. More than twenty new governors have been sworn in replacing Mubarrak cronies, in most cases with other insiders.

In a recent TV interview, quoted in the Economist, a member of the Supreme Military Council enthused that in the New Egypt, freedom of expression is guaranteed “so long as it is respectful and doesn't question the armed forces.” The army remain deeply entwined in the economy, running for profit hospitals, motor vehicle manufacturing plants, and many other businesses that bring positions of considerable power and wealth to senior officers. (Joel Brinkley, SF Chronicle - 5/1/11) The United States still provides $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt, plus $255 million in economic assistance, and the generals are the major beneficiaries. After all, Egypt has no militant neighbors that pose a serious threat, other than Israel with which it has a peace treaty. Once you are fully equipped with armored personnel carriers, several thousand tanks, and a full compliment of F16 fighter jets, you have to find some other emoluments upon which to spend these annual American gratuities – like Army-run monopoly industries. If the Army is to return to barracks after the fall elections, it will require that the US continue to provide the dollars to sustain the generals' cushy life style.

The wave of labor disturbances that started during the Tahrir Square Days in January and February continues with strikes recently by 3000 furniture makers in Helwan, 2500 workers at the Jawhara Ceramics Factory in Sadat City, International Airport personnel, the work force at the Torah Starch and Glue Plant, the Doctors Syndicate in Cairo and many more. (WSWS – 5/05/11) These testify to the backing of the working class for the Tahrir uprising, which had first been written off as a “Facebook Revolution” by students and intellectuals. There have been several outbreaks of Coptic–Moslem fighting around Cairo, one of which was apparently triggered by rumors that a Moslem woman, who married a Christian (10% of population) and converted but was now being held against her will. Several churches were burned and 240 wounded. But generally, all is peaceful and the blackened streets and turnabouts near Tahrir Square have been scrubbed clean of graphiti, sod and flowers planted in traffic islands, and the entire area practically air-brushed. There seems a genuine desire not to return to those days of upheaval.

Popular committees to protect the revolution have been formed in Cairo and elsewhere. On March 18th, a referendum was held throughout the country on nine constitutional amendments intended to pave the way for parliamentary elections in September. The amendments included restricting the President to two four-year terms of office, banning holders of foreign passports from office, and assuring the formation of a committee to draft a new constitution. While only 18 million out of a Egypt's eligible 45 million actually voted, this was far higher than the participation level during Mubarrak's electoral farces, and 77.2% approved the nine amendments. Since the beginning of this year, food prices have doubled and unemployment hovers around 30% for younger adults. (BBC News, 2/12/11) The Army, never designed to be a governing body, will try to keep the lid on at least until parliamentary elections in September and most probably until a presidential election can be held in 2012. People speak of the revolution as having restored their “dignity” and express their belief that an enlightened democratic Egypt is on the way. Indications are that they will flood angrily back into the streets if things don't improve soon. The Army is of course wary of any further display of people muscle and tries to placate the public with stories about the travails of Mubarrak's sons Gamal and Alaa in Turak Farm Prison, plans for prosecution of various cabinet ministers, and now the questioning of Mubarrak's wife Suzanne on suspicion of misuse of government funds. Last week, former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly was sentenced to 12 years in jail on charges of money-laundering and profiteering. This is serious.

BACK TO COLONIAL WARS IN LIBYA?
It seems that France and the UK had planned a mock attack upon Libya called “Southern Mistral 2011” for months. (Global Research 5/3/11) It was to take place back on March 21st and the two old Sinai schemers were all set for war games in the Mediterranean involving paratroops, Royal Air Force Tornado GR-4s, French Mirage 2000s, Vickers and Boeing aerial tankers, radar control planes and an array of 30 other aircraft including helicopters. The mock war games were not-so-mysteriously called off on March 19th when the UN Security Council approved Resolution 1973 s supposedly to protect civilians being threatened by Qaddafi 's army. The “defensive attack” commenced with the launch of 104 US Tomahawk missiles intended to wipe out the Libyan air force. The similarity of the games to the real thing was not coincidental. However, the Pentagon, acting upon Secretary Gates' avowed lack of enthusiasm for the venture, has pulled back from active involvement in the war effort and France and the UK, using runways in Italy and Sicily, have mounted a modest air support effort and ferried supplies to the so-called “rebel forces”, centered in Bengazi, in a rather pathetic attempt to topple the Libyan government. We remain puzzled by the lack of justification for a UN sponsored rebellion against Gaddafi, apart from his disconcerting use of bizarre hats. The UN Human Rights Council had just drafted a glowing report on Libya's human rights achievements as they do once every four years for every UN member. It was quickly buried by guess who. Libya has been behaving itself for some years now, having eliminated all elements of its once-active nuclear weapons activities, and knuckling under to British prosecution of the two presumed Libyan Lockerbie bombers. They have signed new contracts with western oil companies producing Libya's 1.5 million barrel per day of oil and have invested heavily in Italian industry. Why did the Western powers attack them just now? The war effort seems to be running out of steam with the UK and France unable to effectively coordinate their support and with no one expressing interest in actually placing foreign troops on the ground and taking on Gaddafi's army. Exactly what President Obama expects from this adventure has not been shared so far. We find our CIA agents in Bengazi working in alliance with the rebel Islamic Fighting Group, the most radical element in the Al Qaeda network. This group sent volunteers to Iraq and Kosovo to fight for radical Islam and some of them may have been our allies way back in the 1980s when we supported Al Qaeda in the Afghanistan war against Russian occupation.

THE SYRIAN STRUGGLE
On May 1st, the Editor attempted to enter Syria from Jordan but was blocked at the border. The demonstrations that seemed to have started in southern Syria near Dera'a just north of the Jordanian border, have now spread to the Damascus suburbs, to the port of Banias on the Mediterranean coast, and to the industrial cities of Homs and Hama. Few international reporters are in Syria and most information has been leaked out via Internet servers and You-Tube videos. Various elements within President Bashar al-Asaad's government have expressed interest in a dialogue with the demonstrators while the Army has shown an iron fist and persists in firing into crowds. Guns are being smuggled into Syria from Lebanon and Israel has taken an interest in keeping this upheaval boiling. Unless a real crack develops within the military, it seems unlikely that the demonstrations will reach sufficient heat to spark the overthrow of Bashar al Asaad. The President is not unpopular and Syrian GDP has been growing steadily as the economy moves away from socialism and foreign investment flows into the country from oil rich states anxious to find investment and unhappy with the low returns in the United States. Unemployment remains high, 20% unofficially, however and average wages are only $290 per month, compared with $200 in Egypt. These protests may actually give Bashar al-Assad justification to loosen up the economy and provide for more freedom of expression and approve a few political parties.

LETS NOT GENERALIZE ABOUT THE ARAB WORLD
The Middle East is much more varied in terms of politics, national characteristics, and culture than we simple-minded Americans are willing to bother with. Thus, Fox News and our major media networks always reach for bloated generalizations about that common nationalist spark igniting the Arab world, the hidden hand of Al Qaeda propagandists, and the like. Pay no attention to this bunkum, always look for the barely hidden hand of Hilary and her friends at AIPAC and the CIA.

In May 1955, less than ten years after the United States had cremated 150,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in a raid that ended WWII and led to the eventual death from radiation of a total of 300,000, President Eisenhower introduced the still staggering Japanese nation to “Atoms for Peace”. A delegation of American industrialists, financial gurus and scientists brightly explained how this atom that had decimated their people just ten years ago was actually a wonderful gift. The delegation was disrupted during their presentation at Tokyo's Hibya Park by protesters more concerned with the continuing plutonium poisoning and other still lethal gifts of nuclear fission. Atoms for Peace seemed a cruel joke in a country where hundreds of thousands still faced a slow death from radiation. The Japanese Diet did not see the humor in this cruel joke: it immediately established the Japan Atomic Energy Commission which eventually approved 55 nuclear power stations spread up and down the coasts in the world's most earthquake hazardous country.(Will Parrish,3-17-11, w.parrish@ruseuo.net)

Approvals were streamlined, inspections waved, and technological short cuts introduced to reduce costs, bury problems and accelerate Japan's industrial recovery. Will Parrish points out that: “One of the primary reasons the US decided to promote civilian nuclear power development in the first place was that these atoms for peace power plants could produce, as a byproduct, Plutonium, an essential fissionable material for advanced nuclear weapons. Plutonium, the most toxic substance on earth, does not exist in nature but is only available as a result of nuclear fission.” So, even in those very early days of the nuclear age, the US was not merely thinking warm and fuzzy thoughts about “peaceful atoms” but was developing sources of materials for use in its program to achieve global dominance over the Soviet Union.

Don't Light a Fire You Cannot Put Out
Splitting the atom unleashes a primordial force beyond all our ability to control. We have seen, after the Chernobyl meltdown, that we cannot cool down that molten mass of radioactive material slowly and inexorably eating its way into the ground beneath the now-deserted plant site. Jonathan Schell has concluded that: “a stumbling, imperfect, and probably imperfect-able creature like ourselves is unfit to wield the stellar fire released by the split or fused atom. Surely the earth is provided with enough primordial forces of destruction without our help in introducing more, such as Plutonium.” In reference to the Trinity test in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was detonated, J. Robert Oppenheimer famously recalled the Bhagavad Gita: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." We have lit a fire we cannot possibly quench and yet we have proceeded to build nuclear plants on hazardous sites, comfortable with our faith in science and technology and our arrogant belief that we can overcome all problems, control the physical world, use nature to our benefit and guarantee our corporations a healthy profit.

What Did We Learn From Chernobyl and Three Mile Island?
In 1979, just three months after start-up, the nuclear reactor at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania overheated when two cooling water pumps failed and their valves stuck closed. Half the reactor core melted. Fortunately, the outer reactor enclosure held and only small quantities of radioactive nuclides were released. The shock of this failure halted all new nuclear power licensing in the US, but did not stop work on the many already in construction. Then, in 1986, the Chernobyl power plant in the Ukraine went critical. This older graphite-cooled reactor, one of four at the site, was undergoing a test of its ability to withstand a 60 second loss of cooling water. It flunked the test, overheated and ruptured. The plant had been operating for several years even while the operators knew that with a loss of primary coolant, it would take too long for the backup diesels to get into full operation to prevent meltdown. The graphite moderator, once exposed to air, ignited releasing an enormous cloud of poisonous materials. The plume of death circled the world twice before dissipating. Eventually one-third of a million people had to be relocated. We were told by the IAEA and WHO that only 4000 had died as a result of this exposure, but a new study now estimates the death toll from 1986 to 2004 at 985,000 from radioactive releases worldwide. As outlined by Physicians for Social Responsibility, the radio nuclides released in the plume of death include Iodine 131 which migrates in the air and causes thyroid cancers especially in children, Cesium 137 which concentrates in bones and causes leukemia, Strontium 90, and Plutonium 239 which causes lung cancer and can kill instantaneously if inhaled in any sizable dose. The book in which this has now been reported, 25 years after the accident, concludes by quoting President John F. Kennedy's call in 1963 for an end to atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. Yablokov then comments: "The Chernobyl catastrophe demonstrates that the nuclear industry's willingness to risk the health of humanity and our environment with nuclear power plants that will result, not only theoretically, but practically, in the same level of hazard as with nuclear weapons." (Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, New York Academy of Sciences, 2010: Yablokov & Nesterenko). “I am not optimistic about the situation at Fukushima. It’s especially dangerous if plutonium is released as inhalation of plutonium results in a high probability of cancer. A release of plutonium will contaminate that area forever and it is impossible to clean up. Plutonium is deadly for 240,000 years.” Fukushima Reactor #3 is fueled by a mixture of uranium mixed with recycled plutonium. (www.BeyondNuclear.org)

Old Problems Overlooked
Today, at least five of Japan's arsenal of 55 nuclear reactors have experienced severe damage from the earthquake and tsunami of March 11th and are leaking radioactive wastes including cesium and iodine into the atmosphere. All are of General Electric BWR (boiling water reactor) design and have all been in service close to 40 years. These units have several inherent weaknesses.

1.Metallurgical failures of the nickel based super-alloys in the reactor cores were first identified in the 1960s. These involved embrittlement and inter granular stress corrosion cracking. TEPCO's (Tokyo Electric Power) attempts to repair cracks in reactor vessel shrouds in 13 units were reviewed and accepted by the Japanese Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA). NISA assigned responsibility for future inspections of the reactor shrouds to TEPCO.(WSWS Mike Head 3/17/11) and washed their hands of the problem. There is an acknowledgment in Japan that regulatory agencies have no right or authority to impede the actions of private companies.
2.The design of the GE reactors has been a matter of controversy for 35 years. Dale Bridenbaugh and two colleagues at GE resigned in 1976 when they became convinced the design, not withstanding the threat of cracks, was so flawed it would lead to a devastating accident. Harry Denton, an officer of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission asserted in the mid-1980s that there was a 90% probability of these reactors bursting in a few hours, should fuel rods overheat and melt.
3.A major earthquake is likely to cause, as it did at Fukushima, a region-wide power failure and that would shut down the main electric-driven cooling pumps. Because of this possibility, the backup diesels-driven pumps must always be instantly operable. This has seldom been the case however, due to lack of periodic testing, poor maintenance and no recognition that this was really a serious problem. Furthermore, diesel engines are often located in basement areas where tsunami flooding would render them inoperable.
4.Spent fuel pools, exposed to the atmosphere, are densely packed with as many as 20 years accumulation of fuel rods awaiting an ultimate disposal site that has never been found. The result is often overcrowding in the ponds, poor water circulation and damage to the older but still very radioactive rods. In the event of a loss of coolant accident, an exposed zirconium rod will react with water and release hydrogen, causing fires and explosions. The Germans have now put all their nuclear wastes in vitreous (dry cask) containers which no longer need cooling and can no longer ignite. The cost of these casks is high and few operating utilities have bothered with them unless forced by a lack of space. However, even these casks must find another home eventually, since their life is only 100 years and the half-life of Plutonium is 24,000 years.

In a cruel twist, Fukushima #1 was approved in Feb 2011 for another 10 years of operation after it had reached its design limit of 40. TEPCO has now admitted that they failed to inspect 33 pieces of equipment at the Fukushima Daiichi complex and another 24 at the nearby Fukushima Daini complex. These include cooling system electric pumps and diesel back up units. Earlier, TEPCO withheld data on cracks in the shrouds over the reactor enclosure that had first been reported in 2000 and never repaired. TEPCO now admits having falsified inspection reports and hidden equipment flaws for 16 years. (NYT 3-22-11). At the Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant 117 inspections were also missed. The March 2nd, 2011 report by Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Agency said that the missed inspections did not present an immediate risk to safety and gave TEPCO until June 2nd to respond. Eisaku Sato, a former governor of Fukushima Prefecture explained how the system works: “The Ministry of Energy, Trade and Industry, and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency all share cozy ties with TEPCO and other operators. Some of these operators offer lucrative jobs to former ministry officials in a practice known as “amakudari or descent from heaven.” . (NYT 3-22-11) “They are all birds of a feather” said the retired Dr. Sato philosophically.

The nuclear industry has always been dedicated to secrecy, as if the public could not possibly comprehend such a complex technology and must only be fed meager bites of well-laundered information that will not cause unnecessary fear or panic. With radiation being invisible and its results not immediate, secrecy was easy. After 1945, the United States did not want the public to realize the extent of the cruelty and inhumanity we had inflicted upon the Japanese with the nuclear bombs. During our 40 year cold war standoff with the Soviet Union, the public was not aware of how close we came to another nuclear war. With the arrival of Atoms for Peace, we were seldom informed of the risks taken in design of nuclear power stations nor advised of the instances when they came dangerously close to meltdown. It was years before Three Mile Island's threat was revealed and only in the past year have data on the true death toll from Chernobyl been published. The Atomic Energy Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Agency have always downplayed dangers of radiation and have told us repeatedly that these low level exposures represented no human threat. (Truthout: What is the Meaning of Safe 3/22/11)

Where Were The Whistleblowers?
The laxity of safety standards in the design, maintenance and operation of nuclear power plants in Japan and the United States is startling. The owners of these plants were repeatedly informed of the dangers and chose to ignore the risks without penalty. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an arm of the United Nations, said in 2008 that safety rules were out of date and a strong earthquake would pose a serious problem in Japan. These fears were also expressed at the 2008 G-8 Nuclear Safety and Security Group meeting in Tokyo (The Telegraph, 3/16/11). The Japanese government responded by building an emergency response center at Fukushima, a facility immediately put out of action when the 9.0 tremor hit, Wikileaks cables disclose how in 2006 the Japanese Government opposed a court order to shut down nuclear power stations in western Japan because “the plants were built to out-of-date specifications and could only withstand a 6.5 magnitude earthquake”. The Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency responded: “We believe the reactors are safe and that all safety analyzes were appropriately conducted.” The government successfully overturned the court order in 2009.

The costs of cleanup at Fukushima will be fatal to many of the workers now involved. The Chernobyl experience is chilling to recall: It is estimated that between 600,000 and one million people participated between 1986 and 1992 in cleanup work at Chernobyl. They were called “Liquidators” by the Russians. According to Vyacheslavslav Grishin of the Chernobyl Union, 60,000 have died from their exposure and 165,000 are permanently disabled. (Wikipedia 3-23-11)

Can Nuclear Power Have A Future After All This?
Apparently so. On March 2nd, just nine days before the 9.0 Richter earthquake and tsunami struck Fukushima, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a proposal by Nuclear Innovation North America (NINA) to build and operate two new reactors for the South Texas Project in Matagorda County, 90 miles southwest of Houston. President Obama provided $8.5 billion in loan guarantees for the project, a partnership of American investors with the already hapless TEPCO of Japan. This are part of Obama's recently announced plan for a “Nuclear Renaissance” involving $36 million in loan guarantees for 6 nuclear plants in the US. No private financial institutions will finance nuclear plants in the US without such guarantees, knowing as they do the incredible risks involved. The Price Anderson Act of 1957 already takes corporations off the hook for any 3rd party liability in the event of major nuclear disasters. Nevertheless, movements are currently underway to shut down the two large West Coast nukes at Diablo Canyon and San Onofre in California. These plants house 4 very large reactors that have already operated 30 years. They were designed for 7.5 and 7.0 Richter earthquakes respectively in a region crisscrossed by geologic faults and a history of large quakes. The San Francisco of 1906 itself was a 7.7. The Fukushima Complex was designed for a 7.9 Richter. Our arrogant faith in technology and blind trust in our corporations continues.